Fimbank president Margrith Lütschg-Emmenegger will be retiring as from January 1, citing personal reasons. She will retain a role as a consultant to the bank.

Lütschg-Emmenegger joined Fimbank as executive vice president in April 2003 and was appointed president in September 2004.

Simon Jethro Lay will be taking over as acting CEO. Lay is the first executive vice president and managing director of London Forfaiting Company, which forms part of the Fimbank Group. He joined LFC in 1991 and was entrusted with expanding its operations in the Americas, the Middle East and Turkey.

He is also Fimbank’s representative officer in the UK.

In its recent interim results, Fimbank said that although operating results in the main component entities and some of the associated factoring entities have been healthy, new impairments were hitting the performance of several entities across the group.

It also noted that recovery efforts with regard to existing cases had not so far yielded positive results “making the aggregate impairment situation materially challenging”.

In the past year, the bank expanded into Chile and opened a branch in Athens.