Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Financial services |
Founded | 1993 |
Headquarters | 157, rue Faubert Pétion-Ville, Haiti |
Key people | Franck Helmcke (Chairman and CEO) |
Revenue | US$ 95.2 million (2017) |
US$ 15.2 million (2017) | |
Total assets | US$ 1.645 billion (2017) |
Number of employees | 1,311 (2017) |
Website | UnibankHaiti.com |
Unibank, S.A. is one of Haiti's two largest private commercial banks. The bank was founded in 1993 by a group of Haitian investors and is the main company of Groupe Financier National (GFN). It opened its first office in July 1993 in downtown Port-au-Prince and has 51 branches throughout the country as of the end of 2017.
On December 28, 2016, Unibank acquired Scotiabank's Haiti operations. Today, Unibank is the parent company of a group of subsidiaries each concentrating in a specific financial area:
In October 2023, Carl Braun, Chairman Emeritus and Founding Director of Unibank, resigned from his position as a result of sanctions imposed on him by Canada. [1] Indeed, Carl Braun is on a list of Haitian businessmen who, according to Canadian authorities, "fuel violence and instability in Haiti by engaging in corruption and other criminal acts, and by enabling armed gangs to carry out illegal activities that terrorize the population and threaten peace and security in Haiti." [2]
Haiti is a free market economy with low labor costs. A republic, it was a French colony before gaining independence in an uprising by its enslaved people. It faced embargoes and isolation after its independence as well as political crises punctuated by foreign interventions and devastating natural disasters. Haiti's estimated population in 2018 was 11,439,646. The Economist reported in 2010: "Long known as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, Haiti has stumbled from one crisis to another since the Duvalier years."
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