Nickie: I am still the best man for UTC

FORMER Unit Trust Corporation (UTC) executive Renwick Nickie still believes he is the best man to lead the financial institution. “I have always known that,” he said in an interview at the Chaguaramas Convention Centre on Thursday,  where  on alliance between Direcone, a subsidiary of the Gillette Group and Accent, a US company was announced. The alliance is meant to boost Direcone’s call centre’s technological capability and facilitate its expansion. Michael Alexander, another UTC executive and a former colleague of Nickie, has been appointed the company’s executive director. Nickie is challenging the UTC’s decision to fire him last year for breaching company procedure and publicly expressing his views on the proposed UTC/FCB merger.

Nickie, when asked if he felt the Government reneged on a promise to appoint him said, like everybody else, he was interviewed and did not know what happened after that.“My feeling is that if I came out at the top then, there is a question,” he said. “People say I am arrogant but they have to understand that it is not about arrogance, it’s about knowing what you do and if you don’t know your own work, then you have a problem. I know what I have done at Unit Trust and at the end of the day I know what is important to me.” He said he had severed all professional ties with the other UTC executives. Pressed as to why he was shafted, Nickie said: “Sometimes when you are very direct and straightforward, there are people who can’t deal with it.”

He said at the end of the day, “I had to decide whether I was going to grovel.” He said this was something he was not prepared to do.” “I have always been honest with people,” he said, noting that “there are people who say they are going to do something, and when the time comes to do it they run and hide”. He said he had been able to build the culture of the UTC and hoped it will survive. “Tell me it is not a good culture,” he said.