Stanchart mum on succession plan

LEKOPANYE MOOKETSI
Correspondent | Friday November 5, 2010 00:00

Of late, there have been concerns whether a Chartered has identified a Motswana who will take over from the current MD, David Cutting, whose contract is expected to end shortly.

Rutang Moses, who was one of the Batswana executives tipped to succeed Cutting, recently quit the bank unceremoniously.

While Standard Chartered is the oldest commercial bank in the country, it is still headed by a foreign national and has never been headed by a Motswana.

This is inspite of the Bank of Botswana having reportedly insisted on Cutting having a Motswana understudy.

But the central bank has rejected at least one Motswana Standard Chartered put forward as Cutting's replacement.

Standard's position on localisation is that as an international bank, it gives equal opportunities to all staff across the world.

'All positions are filled based on a system of democracy which means staff of any nationality are free to fill any position in any country,' Letsunyane says in a written response.

Standard Chartered remains committed to developing talent across the bank at all levels of the organisation, she adds.

Letsuanyane says 98 percent of Standard Chartered Bank's staff in Botswana are Batswana.

The issue of localisation, especially of top posts, was raised by the Botswana Bank Employees Union in a petition it addressed to Standard Chartered last week.

The union said the bank had committed itself to ensuring that all positions in the company were defined in terms of responsibilities and competencies required. 

'Competencies in this respect refer to knowledge, skills or personal characteristics needed to do the existing jobs with a view to achieving the overall objectives,' it said. 

'It is against this background that we strongly believe that our local senior managers have acquired the knowledge and have the skills to compete well in the current global market.'The union said according to a tripartite agreement signed by Standard Chartered, the Commissioner of Labour and itself, localisation must be reviewed annually. 

'Its main objective was to see local managers being groomed by understudying certain roles and eventually taking over from expatriate managers,' the union said. 

'This has not been the case and for the past two years, we have seen an influx of expatriate managers occupying senior roles which the bank had previously reserved for citizen managers.'