Cotu secretary-general Francis Atwoli lost an influential board membership position after the Kenya Commercial Bank's (KCB) acquisition of the troubled National Bank of Kenya (NBK) from the government on September 2.
Business Daily reported on Friday, October 18, that Atwoli had been a board member of the bank since April 2003, where he represented workers’ interests in the bank, having been appointed to occupy one of the National Social Security Fund (NSSF’s) two positions on the board.
Atwoli's exit came at a time when KCB announced that it was making the necessary changes in order to “streamline human resources, systems, processes and procedures” to restore the troubled lender to full functional capacity.
The publication reported the bank had injected new blood into the vacated positions by appointing Julius Karangi, the NSSF board of trustees chairman and former KDF boss, and Treasury’s acting director-general in charge of public investments and portfolio Stanley Kamau to its board of directors.
Also shown the door together with the Cotu secretary-general was the Former NBK Board chairman Mohamed Abdirahman Hassan, who Business Daily reported was replaced by John Nyerere, a member of the KCB Group board.
KCB Group chairman Andrew Wambari Kairu stated that the decision to make changes in NBK's governance was needed in order to restore the troubled bank to its former glory.
“Corporate governance is of utmost priority for us and the structure of the board and management is important in ensuring that the level of corporate governance you expect is maintained,” he said in a statement.
Early 2019, the KCB Group PLC made an offer to acquire 100% of the ordinary shares of the National Bank of Kenya Limited (NBK).
Under the deal, KCB announced that it was set to buy the NBK through a share swap of one KCB share for every 10 of NBK, despite opposition from lawmakers.
Reuters reported on September 2, 2019, that the Central Bank and the Treasury, together with NSSF hold more than 70% of NBK, and had unanimously agreed that the takeover was the only way of rescuing NBK from perennial liquidity challenges.
