DR operations picking up steam

He said their goal now was to "strengthen the bank and clean up the balance sheet."

Gregory Thompson, deputy managing director, said all subsidiaries have done well except in DR. Ian de Souza has since been appointed to head the DR operations there.

In an interview afterward, Dulal-Whiteway said he had no regrets about entering the DR market, noting that there were significant lessons for entering the South American market.

He still bristles though when he talks about the way auditors gave Banco Mercantil a clean bill of health, and then later retracted their statement.

"It’s a first for the bank that we had to deal with something like that," he said. The bank in its 2004 annual report said the losses incurred by Banco Mercantil negatively impacted its efficiency ratio — which increased to 55.1 percent (2003: 46.6 percent). "Without the impact of Banco Mercantil SA, the efficiency ratio for the Group would have been 47.3 percent," the report said.

Both managers took the view that DR was on the upswing and said the economy was picking up.

"It had a precipitous fall but is now on a growth path," Dulal-Whiteway said, noting that a sense of security and soundness was starting to trickle back in.

He said what they had in their favour was the fact that the public was sceptical of locally run banks. Dulal-Whiteway said while they were looking to clean up the balance sheet of the bank, the bank’s size had to be reduced, adding that the view was that costs were too high for the size of the bank. We’re in it for the long haul," he said.