Standard Chartered
The more things change, the more they stay the same. That might be the mantra at Standard Chartered Bangladesh under new chief executive Naser Ezaz Bijoy, in his first year in the chair at Bangladesh’s pre-eminent foreign bank.
A 24-year veteran at StanChart, Bijoy moved up from heading the corporate banking operation in Dhaka to take over the top slot from Abrar Anwar, who has switched to run the bank’s Malaysian operation.
StanChart is the foreign bank Bangladeshis go to, holding around 50% of local deposits with a non-Bangladeshi bank, some 2,471 corporate clients and 268,000 retail customers.
In trade finance, StanChart saw import volume grow by 15% in 2017 and exports by 9%; its trade team handling more than 500,000 transactions last year, an 8% market share of all banks.
The first to introduce credit cards to Bangladesh, StanChart remained the market leader in that sector in 2017.