Barclays Botswana to localise MD's position

Barclays Bank Botswana is expected to appoint a citizen Managing Director once the current MD’s contract expires in two years’ time and the situation at the bank has normalized, Minister of Finance and Development Planning Kenneth Matambo revealed this week.

The minister said the current MD, Reinette van der Merwe, was appointed on a five-year contract effective September 2013 and is due to expire in 2018. “She was deployed from the Regional Group Head Office, with specific mandate to stabilise the situation at the bank, following the resignation in 2010 and 2012 of previous two citizen MDs”, the minister said.

Matambo, who was responding to a question in Parliament, said the bank’s current senior management team comprises seven Batswana and five expatriates. He said this is against claims that since the assumption of office by the current MD all senior management positions, except for two had been delocalised.

The minister said he has been advised that some senior citizen management staff at Barclays have been deployed to even more senior roles within the Barclays Group, through what is referred to as the Bank’s Global Mobility and Leadership Programme.