One of the leading commercial banks, the First National Bank Botswana (FNBB) has replaced its citizen’s executive management with some non citizens from its Head quarters in South Africa.
The Telegragh can reveal that the bank’s Board of Directors failed to localize the bank’s top key posts namely Chief Finance Officer (CEO) which is now filled by Luke Wood Ford who took over from another non citizen. FNBB Director Business post has been filled by another non citizen Grant Lister. Another bank’s key post filled by a South African is Director Credit which Sean Pugh landed on the job this year.
Previously when led by Lorato Boakgomo-Ntakhwana as CEO, the bank had only one non citizen who was the Deputy as the Central Bank encourages. It is not clear how the bank’s leadership resolved to delocalize the three posts by talent from South Africa.
Information reaching this publication is that the bank’s internal talent which was being groomed to take over the roles after having been earmarked were lost to FNBB competitors and to other non banking financial institutions in the market. Some of the positions that recently quit the bank include Deputy CFO, Head of Business Intelligence, some Relationship Managers as well as some Credit Managers from the talent pool that have let the bank.
Last year the bank confirmed the development as it did part ways with some sizeable number of executive directors citing ‘leadership renewal’.
Bank of Botswana (BoB) has also been aggressively advising the country commercial banks board of directors to localize executive positions within the banks.
Contacted for comment, FNBB Marketing and Communications Director Obonye Malope confirmed that there were three Executive Management members affected, and she added that all the roles have been filled.
When quizzed to state how many of posts have been localized, she said “two of three roles are occupied by Batswana”.
