Mr. Joseph M. Matalon, C.D., B.Sc. (Hons.) Econ. He is Chairman of ICD Group Holdings Limited and is a director of certain of ICD’s other subsidiary and associated companies including British Caribbean Insurance Company Limited, West Indies Home Contractors, CGM Gallagher Group, Advantage Communications Inc. and Amber Connect Limited.
He is also a Chairman of the board of the publicly listed company RJR/Gleaner Communications Group and Vice Chairman of 1834 Investments (formerly The Gleaner Company Limited).
He serves as Honorary Chairman of St. Patrick’s Foundation, which supports charitable activities in inner-city communities. He is Past Chairman of the Board of Governors of Hillel Academy, a K-12 international school in Kingston Jamaica, Chairman of the Multicare Youth Foundation (joint boards of YUTE Limited and the Multicare Foundation,) and serves as Co-Vice Chairman of the US-based International Youth Foundation.
Between 2007 and 2016, Mr. Matalon served as Chairman of the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ), the Government of Jamaica’s principal development finance institution and in that capacity served on a number of Enterprise Teams overseeing privatization as well as PPP transactions. During his tenure the DBJ instituted a number of innovative programmes aimed at improving access to finance and strengthening the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Jamaica.
In January 2016, he was appointed Chairman of the Office of Utilities Regulation. Mr. Matalon is also the co-founder and Chairman of First Angels Jamaica (FAJ), the first angel investor network to be established in the island of Jamaica, and which began operation in July 2014.
He has also served on a number of government-appointed national committees established to advise on financial and economic matters, most notably The Tax Reform Committee (1985), The Tax Reform Successor Committee (1991), The Incentives Working Group (2013), The Electricity Sector Enterprise Team (2014) and as Chairman of the Tax Policy Review Committee (2004). Most recently he served a member of the GOJ-appointed Petrojam Review Committee.
Mr. Matalon served as President of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) in the period 2009 -2012, and during his tenure, initiated the formation of the Private Sector Working Group on Tax Reform (PSWG), a forum designed to achieve consensus on tax reform among disparate private sector interests and which subsequently made comprehensive reform recommendations to a Parliamentary Select Committee.
Also during his tenure as PSOJ President, he was responsible for the establishment of Youth Upliftment Through Employment (YUTE) Programme, a three-year US$10 million intervention focusing on inner city, at-risk youth and involving skills remediation/upgrading, job placement and provision of opportunities for entrepreneurial endeavor to approximately 1600 young persons.
In 2010, the Government of Jamaica appointed Mr. Matalon to the Order of Distinction in the Rank of Commander (C.D.), in recognition of his contribution to the Public and Private Sectors, and to community service.
Mr. Matalon was inducted into the PSOJ Hall of Fame in October 2018. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
