GIB restructures

05 October 2001

A radical restructuring process has been completed at Bahrain-based Gulf International Bank (GIB), with the bank reorganised into four core divisions that each report to Khalid al-Fayez, GIB's chief executive officer.

The merchant banking division is to be headed by Matthew Snyder, who was previously the managing director of GIB (UK), and had been with the London-based Saudi International Bank before it merged with GIB in 1999.

The merchant banking division is itself subdivided into four units. The relationship management unit, which will be responsible for managing GIB's branches in Riyadh, London and New York and its representative offices in Abu Dhabi and Beirut, is to be headed by Abbas Ameeri, who was previously GIB's head of corporate banking. The corporate finance division - headed by Michael Parkhouse - will also be subdivided into four divisions, comprising corporate advisory, structured and project finance and syndications and equities. The third branch of the merchant banking division will be the asset management unit, headed by David Waite. The fourth is the financial markets division.

The second core division in the bank is risk management, which will be headed by Mohannad Farouky, who previously served as the deputy managing director of GIB (UK). The third is responsible for liability management and treasury, and will be run by Bashir Barbir. The fourth will be an operations division with responsibility for human resources, information technology and other back office services.

The restructuring at GIB follows a reshuffling of the bank's shareholder structure. In May, Kuwait-based Gulf Investment Corporation (GIC) decided to sell its stake in GIB to its own shareholders, the governments of the six GCC states. The six governments now own 72.5 per cent of the bank between them, with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (central bank) and JP Morgan Overseas Capital Corporation holding 22.2 per cent and 5.3 per cent respectively (MEED 21:9:01).

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