New chief executive officers are being appointed to two banks in Malta – APS Bank and Fimbank – with a link between the two.
The new CEO of APS, due to be officially announced in the coming days, is Marcel Cassar, the first executive vice president and chief financial officer of Fimbank since 2004. He will be taking over from incumbent Edward Cachia, who will be retiring in January 2016.
Mr Cassar has worked with Price Waterhouse (now PwC), the Malta International Business Authority, the Malta Financial Services Centre and Lombard Bank. He is a lecturer and examiner in the Faculty of Laws and sits on several committees. His replacement at Fimbank has not yet been announced.
In the meantime, Fimbank announced that Murali Subramanian is taking over as its chief executive officer on August 6, while Simon Lay, the man appointed as Acting CEO last January to extricate the bank from its dire financial straits, will be appointed deputy CEO, while maintaining his position as managing director of London Forfaiting.
Mr Lay had not been given a specific timeframe but had indicated in an interview with The Business Observer last March that he anticipated that the turnaround strategy would take “at least a year to complete”.
Mr Subramanian, an Indian national, was executive vice president at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank for six years, where he held the position of head of transaction banking of the group, overseeing the growth and return to profitability of this $250 million revenue business. This followed a 21-year career at Citibank and earlier ABN Amro.
In 2014, APS group made a pre-tax profit of €12.8 million out of an operating income of €28.3m, while Fimbank reported a pre-tax loss of $53.43 million (€49.3m) from a net operating income of $52.48 million (€48.5m).