Australia’s Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry claimed its latest scalp on Thursday, when National Australia Bank’s chairman and chief executive both quit.
CEO Andrew Thorburn will finish on February 28; chairman Ken Henry will go once a new permanent chief executive has been appointed, the bank says in a statement.
As an interim measure, board director Philip Chronican, a veteran banker whose previous jobs have included running ANZ’s retail and commercial businesses and being CFO at Westpac, will take over as CEO from March 1 until a permanent appointment is made.
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Kenneth Hayne |
NAB appears to have badly misjudged its tone in response to the Royal Commission, and as Euromoney reported earlier this week, had been singled out by Commissioner Kenneth Hayne, who said in relation to Henry and Thorburn’s testimony that “I am not as confident as I would wish to be that the lessons of the past have been learned.”
He added: “I was not persuaded that NAB is willing to accept the necessary responsibility for deciding, for itself, what is the right thing to do, and then having its staff act accordingly.”
