PK Medappa, group head of Human Resources for Consumer Banking of Standard Chartered Bank, arrived here yesterday on a three-day visit.

He will meet various stakeholders of the bank during his visit, said a press release.

Medappa will provide advice to the bank’s management on emplo-yee engagement, organi-sation tructuring, human capital deploy-ment and other process inter-ventions.

He joined the bank in 1991 and was appointed as the group head of Human Resources for Consumer Banking in July 2008.

Prior to this, Medappa was the group head of human resources for wholesale banking, where he held a key management position in building the business between 2004 and 2008.

News: Daily Sun/Bangladesh/06 Mar 2011

Ensuring safer and faster transfer of money in Bangladesh, Prime Bank Limited inaugurated its second Exchange House in Singapore. Prime Bank Chairman Azam J Chowdhury inaugurated the second branch of Prime Bank owned Prime Exchange Co. Pte Ltd. at Jurong East, Singapore recently.

Ambassador of Singapore in Bangladesh Mr. Verghese Mathews, Vice Chairperson of Prime Bank Mrs. Shahnaz Quashem, Director-Mrs. Meherunnesa Haque, Former Director Md. Abul Quashem were present.

News: The Financial Express/Bangladesh/05 Mar 2011

A discussion meeting on 'Stress Testing' under the Executive Development Program organized by Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited was held recently at the Board Room of Islami Bank Tower. Presided over by Mohammad Abdul Mannan, Managing Director of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited the discussion was presented by Sitangshu Kumar Sur Chowdhury, Executive Director and Shahriar Siddiquee, Deputy Director of Bangladesh Bank.

The function was attended among others by Mohd. Shamsul Haque, Md. Habibur Rahman, Md. Setaur Rahman and Md. Nurul Islam, Deputy Managing Directors and top executives of Head Office, Islami Bank Training and Research Academy (IBTRA), Dhaka Central, South and North Zone of the Bank.

News: The Financial Express/Bangladesh/05 Mar 2011

Banks face a period of over-regulation caused by public outrage over lax supervision that led to the global financial crisis, OECD chief Jose Angel Gurria said on Friday. Ever since the 2007-2008 slump, regulators worldwide have moved to strengthen supervision of large banks and other financial institutions. “We blew it so badly that right now there is a pendular movement toward too much regulation,” Gurria told 600 senior financiers attending the spring meeting of the Washington-based Institute of International Finance (IIF). “Don’t fight it—it is going to happen no matter what. People are too scared, people are too angry, the consequences have been too massive,” Gurria told the forum held in New Delhi.
Financial institutions in mature economies are being blamed for irresponsible lending and risk-taking that led to the worst global downturn since the 1930s Great Depression.
“We share the responsibility” for the events leading up to the crisis, said Gurria who heads the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation.
“The banks are a very good villain (in the public eye) and maybe we will have a period when we have too much
regulation as an inevitable political result of the crisis and then maybe we will get it right,” he said.
Gurria’s comments came as the IIF, which represents 430 institutions from over 70 countries, said the regulatory crackdown on financial bodies could hurt economic recovery by curbing banks’ critical funding role. “Never before have so many regulatory reforms been determined or planned” by different nations, said IIF chairman Josef Ackermann.
Ackermann called for better global coordination in drafting regulatory policies on the need for banks to hold more capital, pay higher taxes and other reforms in order to avoid the creation of “uneven playing fields.”
He urged that authorities around the world take stock of regulations that “are in train” to see how these will affect the financial system. 

News: The Independent/Bangladesh/05 Mar 2011