FORMER CEO of NCB Financial Group Patrick Hylton and his former Deputy Dennis Cohen are estimated to have walked away with between $6 billion and $7 billion in their separation package from the company, ending a twenty year run for both. The figures are estimates calculated by the Jamaica Observer from the company’s financials published late Tuesday.

The final payout is roughly half of the $13.8 billion both men initially said they were due after surrendering shares of that value in 2021 to the company. A dispute ensued over the compensation, which ultimately led to the two men being separated from NCB Financial Group officially on November 13 after being on leave for four months from July 16. It is estimated that Hylton received approximately 60 per cent of the settlement while Cohen walked away with the other 40 per cent.

Both men, along with the NCB Financial Group Chairman Michael Lee Chin, have also buried the hatchet that led to the disagreement. They sat with the Business Observer for an exclusive interview on Monday to show Jamaica that despite the events of the last four months, all parties are satisfied and ready to move on.

Reflecting on their time at the bank, Hylton and Cohen said they had no regrets. For Hylton, the payday was the fulfillment of a promise Lee Chin made to him in 2001 when he was headhunted to run the institution.

“But before joining, he said to me in the foyer [of his offices in Burlington, Ontario] right after the negotiations, ‘You need to join us, because this billionaire will make you rich,’ ” Hylton said with a guffaw, triggering the other men in the interview to laugh as well. Asked if Lee-Chin did make him rich, Hylton with an even broader smile only replied, “Well,” and laughed again. “I won’t complain, let me put it that way. I won’t complain.

“As the chairman said, nobody is going to be totally satisfied in the context of a settlement,” Hylton told the Business Observer. “There’s a phraseology that we have in the business together whenever we have issues: We have to learn to disagree without being disagreeable,” he continued, signalling that though himself and Cohen were in dispute with the bank about their compensation, the matter is settled and all three men remain on good terms.

“I think the settlement is a manifestation of that state of not being disagreeable but coming to a conclusion and coming to a decision which we think is in the interest of all parties, ourselves as individuals, but most importantly the company so that it can focus on its growth, development and trajectory going forward,” Hylton added.

Cohen, for his part, was more reserved but said he was happy the saga is now over.

“I admit that it hasn’t been easy,” the former NCB Financial Group deputy CEO said. “After 20 years I have absolutely no regrets,” he stated, adding that he is in a better place today than he was before July 16 — that was the day Hylton and Cohen were sent on leave by the company before being eventually separated.

Yet, both men referred to Lee-Chin as chairman throughout the interview. It was he, and not the current management or the full board, which negotiated the settlement with Hylton and Cohen.

“I called him and said ‘Patrick, I am here to negotiate with the devil,’ and he was taken aback,” Lee-Chin said of the call which set off the final round of talks to get a deal done with the two men. “But, within 10 minutes of that it was like we were normal again.”

Lee-Chin said ahead of the negotiations he was building up things in his mind, some of them negative, but decided to reach out to both men after taking a long view of the relationship he had with both men, whom he said “bleed NCB”.

“When I elongate the relationship that I have had personally with Dennis and Patrick, and when I think about the relationship that these two gentlemen have had with the organisation, against the background of what we were going through at that moment I said to myself (as I said to Dennis in a WhatsApp chat), ‘We always should look at things on a net basis. You don’t judge a relationship by the ups or the downs in the short run, you look at the net positive over the long run.’ So it was with that in mind I reached out to Patrick,” Lee-Chin noted.

“We’ve had disagreements [in the past] but it was more because we were debating. We’ve never had any emotional angst with each other, never!” he posited.

But he said the decision to separate the two men from the bank is one that was made at the “right time. That’s my 100 per cent feeling.

“Looking back, I think the bank made the best decision,” Lee-Chin said about the separation of the men. “We all plateau at some point. And as I said to Patrick and Dennis that in retirement, make sure you hang around young people because when you have young people around you, you have new ideas, different ideas — they will inspire you. So, periodically, every institution needs a fresh pair of eyes to what it is doing.”

Hylton and Cohen themselves said that while they were grooming individuals to take over from them, they were not ready to leave the bank to which they had both given the greater share of their work life.

“At the end of the day a judgement has to be made: Who is the best person to lead the organisation given where it wants to go, given the challenges which confront it? And then somebody has to make that call. At certain levels, when it was a division head or a subsidiary head, it was my call,” Hylton pointed out. He continued, “At the level of the group it’s [Lee-Chin’s] call. And if he comes to that conclusion then I think we have a responsibility, in the context of that decision, to make way — which is what happened. So we stepped aside, we had a negotiation and we have a settlement, and we allow the organisation to go forward.”

Cohen added that he would not undo anything that happened in the last four months because the events forced him to do some level of self-examination, including recalling when he was to leave his job at Citibank to take up a role at NCB in 2004.

“I recall being told by many people that it is a bad idea to leave Citibank to join NCB. And in spite of what I was hearing I wasn’t daunted because I wanted to work with an institution [at] which I believed I could make a big difference. I didn’t want to join an institution at the top of its game and then I effectively was going in just to maintain the status quo. So, my objective was to go somewhere where it will be far better on my departure than it was on my joining.”

He noted that when he joined NCB the company was generating $2.5 billion in profits. “The NCB I left in July is far different from the NCB that I joined in 2004, and I step away feeling a sense of accomplishment.”

“If you look at NCB then and NCB now, it’s a completely different organisation. We were just in Jamaica, Cayman, and had a little operation in the UK in 2001. Now, this is an organisation with operations in about 20 countries across the region with the acquisition of Guardian, with a business in Holland, a fairly significant business across the Dutch Caribbean. So, a lot has been accomplished and we know that at some stage, whether it is now or some other point in time, it would need new leadership,” said Hylton who was instrumental in the growth he pointed out.

For him, “This is like a relay; none of us is here permanently. We run our leg, do our part, and then we pass the baton.

“I won’t say that I was at the time ready but that’s the circumstances that have evolved and we just respond to it and I have no issues with it,” he concluded. At the same time, Lee-Chin reflected on the time.

“When I first met Patrick we spoke about where he is coming from — and Patrick started in the financial services sector as a teller in May Pen. And in the front of my mind I said, ‘What a Cinderella story this would be and a motivation and inspiration to every single person who started from nothing that they too can — through the dint of hard work, being smart and creative, energetic, committed and persevering — can find himself at the helm of an institution in an industry that is the most competitive in the world and can be an inspiration to every person who started at the base that they too can, through hard work, can achieve the level of wealth and fulfillment and success that this man has achieved.'”

So far Cohen has moved on to The University of the West Indies, Mona, as chairman of the project Operation Restructuring Transformation and Growth (RTG), a key initiative geared towards reforming the administrative processes on the campus, but said he is still trying to think through his long-term future and that the university fits that bill. He said he is working with young entrepreneurs now and has no immediate plans to go back in thecorporate world.

As for Hylton, he too said he is working with young entrepreneurs but is getting offers for work.

“I’ve had approaches, even up to today, to be honest, but I have said to people that I am not at this point feeling a desire to go into corporate at this moment,” Hylton said as he outlined that a headhunter from outside of Jamaica contacted him on Monday for work. He said others have contacted him both locally and externally, “but at this point in time I am not thinking corporate. The next iteration of Patrick Hylton is still to be defined”.