Diamond Bank names Ogbechie Chairman

FOLLOWING the retirement of Igwe Ugochukwu Nnaemeka Achebe, Diamond Bank Plc, on Wednesday announced the appointment of Dr. Chris Ogbechie as the new Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Igwe Achebe, has led the board since January 1, 2007.

  The Bank in a notice dated January 13, 2015, to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), disclosed that the Board of Directors of the Bank in a recent Board meeting, approved Igwe Achebe’s retirement and the appointment of Ogbechie as the new Chairman.

  According to a statement from the bank, “we wish to inform you that the Board of Directors of Diamond Bank Plc at its meeting held on November 29, 2014, approved the retirement of IgweUgochukwuNnaemeka Achebe, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the bank effective December 31, 2014. 

  “In his stead, the board unanimously approved the appointment of Dr. Chris Ogbechie, a non-executive director, as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Diamond Bank, with effect from January 1, 2015.

  “Igwe Achebe’s tenure as the Chairman of the board was characterized by tremendous growth of the Bank in the quality of asset base and the entrenchment of the bank as a leader in Retail Banking in Nigeria. He successfully saw Diamond Bank through the entry of Actis- an institutional investor in 2007, the Global Depositary Receipts (GDR) listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2009, the 2008 global economic meltdown, and more recently, the bank’s rights issue of 2014.”

  The new Chairman, according to the bank, is a seasoned boardroom technocrat and has a First Class Honours degree in Mechanical Engineering from Manchester University, an MBA from Manchester Business School and holds a PhD in Management from Brunel University, Middlesex, England. 

  He is scholar par excellence and is currently a Faculty member of the Lagos Business School where he teaches Strategy and Corporate Governance and a visiting Professor of Strategy and Marketing at Strathmore Business School, Nairobi.

  Ogbechie is an authority in the field of strategy and sits on the board of a number of companies and is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Marketing (NIM) and the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON). 

  He is also a member of the American Academy of Management, International Corporate Governance Network and Strategic Management Association and Director at the Society for Corporate Governance Nigeria and was honoured by Pope John Paul II in 1999 with the papal knighthood of St. Sylvester.

  “His work career spans various roles in local and multi-national companies including Xerox Nigeria Ltd where he was a Product Manager and Nestle Foods Nigeria Plc