Shahbaz Jamil to head BoK as acting MD

PESHAWAR: The provincial government has decided to assign the acting charge of the Managing Director (MD) of the Bank of Khyber (BoK), to Muhammad Shahbaz Jamil, who only last year joined the bank as head Business Management Group.

The Finance Department would issue notification to this effect in a day or two.

The sources told this scribe that the Finance Department had already sent the name of Shahbaz Jamil to the State Bank of Pakistan to be assigned the charge of the acting MD to look after the affairs of the bank till the hiring of the permanent MD.

The BoK, the lone financial institution of the province, remained in the centre of the row between the bank management and Jamaat-e-Islami affiliated Finance minister Muzaffar Said over the last three years, operated without any MD for the last two week.

The absence of the MD affected routine work of the bank that forced the Finance Department to assign the acting charge of the office of the MD to the EVP whose seniority has reportedly been questioned.

The Finance Department after the termination of the contract of Shamsul Qayyum on September 6, wrote to the bank management on September 26 to send details of the senior group heads/executive vice presidents (SVPs) in the bank for the assignment of the acting of the MD.

The bank management provided the names of four officers (letter available with The News) along with the details, including the date of their joining the bank and elevation as EVPs.

The bank placed, Shahbaz Jamil, at the top of the seniority list indicating that he has been EVP since August 1, 2006 and joined the BoK on December 13, 2016.

Shahbaz Jamil, prior to his present position, had served in Pak-Oman Investment Company from 2006 to 2010 and then joined the United Bank Limited (UBL) where he served till 2016.

Second on the list is the senor-most officer of the bank, Shabeer Ahmed Sheikh (EVP), who is head Operation and Support Group. He joined the BoK in July 1992 and was promoted as EVP in January 2013. Third on the list is Muhammad Yaseen Chaudhary, head Special Assets Managing and Credit Administration Group, who joined the bank in February 2004 and was elevated as EVP in 2013.

Similarly, the name of EVP Muhammad Atif Hanif, presently holding the position of head Islamic Banking Group, was also sent to the Finance Department. He joined the BoK as EVP in November 2015.

The last three have been shown as the senior EVPs on the seniority list updated on December 31, 2015, before the joining of Shahbaz Jamil. However, the management counted the experience of Shahbaz Jamil in his previous institutions as his seniority and placed him on the top of the seniority list of the officers whose names were sent to the Finance Department.

Meanwhile, 37 potential candidates, who besides Shahbaz Jamil also include six former MDs of the bank, have submitted credentials for the top slot of the bank that has been vacant since September 30.

Those who served the bank as MD in the past and applied for the post again are Arbab Riaz, Javed Hashmat, Qazi Munir, Tariq Nasim, Shabeer Sheikh and Amjad Ali Arbab.

The sources added that there is a likelihood that the process of hiring permanent MD of the bank would take longer.

They claimed that the would-be acting MD, Shahbaz Jamil, would be more acceptable to some shareholders having representation on the Board of Directors (BOD) of the bank.

He would be kept as MD for a longer time as it was done in the past when Imran Samad was kept as acting MD for a period of over a year.

Sharing the list of candidates for the MD position of the bank with The News, the sources claimed that it would be difficult for the government to hire Shahbaz Jamil as permanent MD as the aspirants also included six ex-MDs who have hand-on experience of running the affairs of the bank as MD.