Addis Fortune (Addis Ababa)
Eden Sahle
25 December 2011
National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), which rejected Zemen Bank’s first choice of president, has given a nod to its second choice, Tsegaye Tetemke, founding president of Lion International Bank (LIB), on Thursday, December 22, 2011.
The board of directors’ first choice was Anteneh Assefa, operations vice president of the Bank of Abyssinia (BoA), but he was rejected on account of inadequate experience. A member of the board directors of the bank who wished to remain anonymous expressed happiness, since the bank has been without a president since Brutawit Dawit Abdi was resigned from her post, on April 12, 2011, after two years in the position.
Tsegaye, 54, married and a father of four, will be the third president of Zemen Bank located on Tito Street. He expressed joy at being selected to be president of the bank, which he admired for its unique operation. The bank, which has 3,000 shareholders, reported an 84.7 million Br profit after tax for the 2010/11 fiscal year.
Tekle Alemeneh was the first president of Zemen Bank, followed by Brutawit, who became the second female president in the banking industry.
Helawi Tadesse, an economics and public policy graduate from Princeton University in the United States was the acting vice president, pending the appointment of the new president.
NBE, which requires 10 years of experience in the banking sector, including five years in a senior managerial position, rejected Anteneh’s nomination an official from the NBE told Fortune. Anteneh, 37, earned his bachelor’s degree in management from Addis Abeba University (AAU) and his master’s degree from Sorbonne in Paris in corporate management and finance.
Anteneh has 13 years of experience in the banking sector, starting from the position of graduate trainee at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE). After eight years there, he moved to the Bank of Abyssinia, as board secretary. He, then, became vice president, a position he held for four years and eight months. He declined to comment on the central bank’s decision.
Tsegaye, on the other hand, has 27 years of experience in different positions, from clerk to vice president at the CBE, alone. He has also been in the consultancy business for three years.
At LIB, however, he was hardly one year as president, when he was forced to leave for unspecified reasons. Before that he had been the project advisor during the establishment process of the bank.
The termination of his contract had nothing to do with financial irregularities or any allegations of malpractice, LIB’s board wrote in their statment at the time. NBE forbids the appointment of people who have been fined, fired, or suspended from presidential positions or refused a license by a professional, trade, or regulatory body due to fraud, negligence, or a violation of law.
Tsegaye has a degree in accounting from Addis Abeba University and a master’s degree in economic policy and management from Ghana University.
Zemen Bank was established in 2008 with a paid-up capital of 150 million Br. It operates from a single branch assisted by Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), point of sale (POS) terminals and foreign exchange bureaus.
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