Bank Of Valletta last week released a profile of Roderick Chalmers, who was appointed the bank's director and chairman with effect from November 15.
Mr Chalmers qualified as a chartered accountant with a small firm in the City of London in 1970. He then joined Coopers & Lybrand (then Cooper Brothers) in London but returned to Malta in 1972 and assisted with the newly opened local office of Cooper Brothers.
Mr Chalmers was admitted to the partnership on January 1, 1974, and acted as audit partner in Malta between 1974 and 1983, with responsibility for a wide range of clients including Barclays Bank (later Mid-Med Bank), Middle Sea Insurance, and a number of local commercial and industrial concerns.
At the firm's request, Mr Chalmers transferred to Coopers & Lybrand Hong Kong as a partner in January 1984. He was the elected managing partner (CEO) of Coopers & Lybrand Hong Kong between 1990 and 1998, during which period the firm experienced significant growth, both in Hong Kong and in the People's Republic of China.
He was appointed to the international board of directors of Coopers & Lybrand in 1996, and acted as chairman of the firm's South East Asia Regional Executive between 1990 and 1998.
When Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse merged in 1998, Mr Chalmers was appointed chairman, Asia-Pacific for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and continued in that position until his retirement from the firm in the autumn of 2000.
The position involved taking overall responsibility for the firm's operations in the Asia Pacific region, and included dealing with numerous post-merger issues in Japan, Korea, the PRC and other major locations. The operations in Hong Kong and the PRC were subsequently fused into a single management unit.
Between 1998 and 2000, Mr Chalmers was also a member of the PwC Global Management Board, a 25-man body responsible for overseeing the firm's global activities. In April 2000, he was asked to chair a small group of senior partners on a study with a mandate to consider the vision, strategies and business plans for PwC as a whole (post reorganisation of the consulting division), and for the component business units within it.
Key experience
In his role as an audit and investigation partner with PwC in Hong Kong, Mr Chalmers had a particular interest in the securities industry. In 1987 he led the Coopers & Lybrand team on a number of assignments for the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong in the period immediately following the stock market crisis.
He was later involved in making a detailed submission to the Securities Review Committee, and also participated on a number of assignments for the Securities and Futures Commission.
Mr Chalmers was appointed by the Government of Hong Kong to act as a non-executive director of the Securities and Futures Commission (the regulator of the Stock and Futures exchanges) between 1992 and 1999. He was also a member of the Takeovers and Mergers Panel and chaired the commission's Audit Committee.
In 1993 he acted as chairman of the Working Group on Financial Disclosure. The group made a series of recommendations (the vast majority of which were implemented) on the disclosure requirements of companies listed in Hong Kong.
In 1997 Mr Chalmers chaired a Working Group set up by the commission to look at automated trading systems. Between 1997 and 1999, he was appointed by the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong to sit on the Banking Advisory Committee.
At the request of the Government of Hong Kong, he also sat on a number of selection committees for senior appointments, including the chairman and chief executive of the Securities and Futures Commission and the director of Trading and Markets.
As an audit partner Mr Chalmers had responsibility for a wide portfolio of clients, and remained active as a client service partner throughout, notwithstanding his responsibilities as senior partner of the Hong Kong firm, and later as chairman of the Asia-Pacific region - and the heavy travel schedule that these roles involved.
His investigation work included numerous acquisition reviews, bank finance studies, involvement in significant corporate debt restructurings and extensive litigation support experience, including the provision of expert testimony in major cases.
Mr Chalmers has been involved in numerous public speaking engagements and has participated at seminars dealing with topics, including developments in banking and securities law, European anti-dumping measures and the responsibilities of directors and auditors.
He acted as chairman to the firm's Technical Committee from 1985 to 1990, and was a member of the Accounting Standards Committee of the Hong Kong Society of Accountants between 1985 and 1989.
Mr Chalmers retired from the firm in the autumn of 2000 to read (full time) for a Master's degree in Divinity at Edinburgh University, which he completed last June.
He and his wife Mary Rose have been married for 35 years and they have three children: Nicholas, who works for Schroders Investment Management in New York, and is married to Julie (they are expecting their first child in February); Amanda, who is married to Christopher Kaye, a management consultant. They live in Singapore, and have a daughter, Ellie, who is two and a half; and Alistair, who has just started medical school in Scotland, after completing his first degree in Spanish and Portuguese at Bristol University.
Mr Chalmers is a non executive director (and chairs the audit committees) of a US listed public company with significant interests in Asia, a family group of companies in Malta, and a recently established insurance company, also in Malta. He also undertakes selective expert testimony and trusteeship assignments. He continues to take a close interest in developments in the international financial services sector and their regulation.
Mr Chalmers is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales, Associate of the Institute of Taxation and Fellow of the Hong Kong Society of Accountants.