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Crisis-ridden National Bank's new board changes course of merger with a plan to breathe new life into the first-generation bank within a year by injecting fresh funds.
Sharing the bank's change of heart for not going for merger with any other commercial bank, the newly constituted board's new chairman, Alhaj Khalilur Rahman, said the bank decided not to go for amalgamation rather they would work for bringing back its lost glory.
"We're agreed not to be merged and we informed the central bank about our stance. The central bank also gives the green signal to our pleas with a condition of improving the weakening bank within a year," he said.
About the revival dosage, he said the board would initially inject Tk 10 billion into the bank and take steps to collect deposits amounting to Tk 30 billion within a short period of time through conducting various deposit-collecting drives.
"We want to restore image of the bank within a year bringing back confidence of our depositors and clients," said Mr Rahman, also chairman of KDS Group of business.
Regarding the previous loan-related irregularities, he said they would not allow anyone to "loot the public money anymore" and take immediate actions to recover the non-performing assets.
When journalists raised question over detailed information about the representative directors and their shareholding ratios, the board chairman parried the query and hurriedly left the place, saying that he had an appointment with the central bank governor.
"No…the national bank is not occupied by any quarter. The government has appointed the directors of the new board," the chairman said before leaving the briefing,
Director of the new board Ehsanul Karim said they want to see a significant change in the operations of the bank within a year. The bank became so weak because of the interests of the board members who had run the bank too many years.
"We come to take the responsibility to revive the bank in greater interest of the country," he added about their rescue mission.
Other members of the new board are Moazzam Hossain, Professor A K M Tofazzal Haque, Md Reazul Karim FCMA, Ershad Mahmud, Lieutenant-General (retd) Md. Shafiqur Rahman, Professor Md Helal Uddin Nizami, Dr Ratna Datta FCA and A B M Zahirul Huda.
The board of the bank was reconstituted within four months of the previous reshuffle following rapidly weakening financial state of the bank after a number of reported loan-related irregularities.
Earlier, the United Commercial Bank had shown interest in taking the problematic bank amid Bangladesh Bank's latest mergers initiative as part of its financial-sector reform recipe. But the immediate-past board of the National Bank decided not to get merged with them.