E-Kantipur

KATHMANDU, JAN 06 -

Nepal Bank Limited (NBL) management has sped up the process of appointing a

new chief executive officer (CEO), after Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) decided to pull itself out from the bank’s management.

NBL, the oldest commercial bank of the country, is preparing to publish a vacancy notice within the third week of January. “We are doing groundwork for publishing the notice of vacancy for a CEO,” said Puspa Raj Rajkarnikar, coordinator of the NBL management committee (Board). “We will publish the vacancy notice within the third week of January.”

After the central bank’s five consecutive efforts to appoint a CEO could not yield positive results, the NRB decided to entrust the responsibility of appointing the CEO to the NBL board. The central bank has asked the NBL board to start the process of appointing the new CEO by mid-March and complete it by mid-April, paving the way for the complete withdrawal of the management team assigned by the central bank.

The CEO appointment was one of the issues discussed at the board meeting of NBL on Tuesday. “We discussed about preparatory works for appointing CEO such as forming a recruitment committee and formulating a time-bound schedule,” said Rajkarnikar.

Rajkarnikar hoped that there will not be any problem in appointing CEO this time, as the criteria set by the NRB is relatively flexible compared to previous ones. The central bank has already fixed the criteria for appointing the CEO and terms of reference for the upcoming CEO. The CEO this time will be chosen among Nepali citizens.

The criteria set by the NRB say that the candidate should have already worked as a chief executive of a bank for two years or deputy CEO for four years. If a bank employee has worked for six years as the chief of certain department of a bank or worked for eight years at managerial level, s/he is eligible to apply for NBL CEO post, as per the central bank criteria. According to a senior official of the bank, 10 top officials including four deputy general managers of NBL are eligible candidates as per the NRB criteria.

But, the candidates should have completed Master’s degree in business, economics or they should be chartered accountants. The NRB direction has paved the way for NBL to appoint CEO even from among the bank’s senior officials.

After the appointment, the new CEO will have to implement a recapitalisation plan and turn the bank into a healthy financial institution within two years of appointment, as per the terms of references fixed for the upcoming CEO.

The upcoming CEO is also expected to maintain the overall non-performing loan (NPL) below 5 percent and NPL for good loan below 1 percent, among others.

Posted on: 2011-01-06 08:39

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