Less than a year after he was promoted to head FirstCaribbean International Bank's (FCIB) investment banking operations across the region, Jamaican Milton Brady has left the finance house to join the regional telecoms group, LIME, as its chief commercial officer, the company announced Monday night.

LIME, formerly Cable & Wireless, also named Englishman David Crawford as its chief operating officer (COO). Crawford worked with C&W in Britain.

Brady, a career banker, could not be reached yesterday for comment on his short stint at FCIB's corporate headquarters in Barbados and a seemingly radical shift in career, but LIME's CEO David Shaw said he and Crawford were joining the telecoms firm at an "exciting time".

"As we enter the next phase of our One Caribbean journey I am fine-tuning the way we run the business, by blending the best of Caribbean leadership with expertise from other markets," Shaw said of the appointments.

Telecoms provider

Cable & Wireless, a London-based telecommunications company, was for nearly a century the monopoly telecoms provider in the English-speaking Caribbean, until its dominance was broken at the start of this decade by Digicel, which launched its Caribbean foray in Jamaica, providing mobile telephone service.

( L - R ) Shaw, Crawford

Digicel has expanded to elsewhere in the region, claiming to be the fastest-growing mobile service provider in the area, with more than eight million subscribers in the Caribbean and Central America.

Last year, Cable and Wireless announced a restructuring of its separate regional businesses into a single seamless operation - although the entities remain distinct companies - and rebranded as LIME.

Competitive position

It is within this structure that Brady will be responsible for strengthening the business' competitive position and, according to Shaw, drive "future growth across all the islands in which LIME operates".

Brady worked in senior positions in banking in the United States and Europe before becoming head of FCIB's Jamaica subsidiary.

Last November, it was announced that he would be promoted to be managing director of the bank's corporate investment business and formally took up the post in January, when he also joined an eight-member executive group to run the bank.