Lone Star chooses an Englishman as Novo Banco’s chairman
Novo Banco's General Supervisory Board will be headed by an Englishman: his name is Byron Haynes and he is coming from Austria to became the bank's new chairman. Ramalho continues to be the CEO.
The North American fund Lone Star has chosen Byron Haynes to be the chairman of the new General Supervisory Board of Novo Banco, ECO knows. This entity is replacing the Administrative Board currently headed by Rui Cartaxo. The new Board will have three more names appointed by Lone Star and two independent figures, as well as an additional spot to be filled in the next couple of months.
Lone Star is preparing to reshape the governance structure of Novo Banco and its members. The changes will occur as soon as the fund takes control of the transition bank — this should have happened by October 20th, the closing date of the deal. But before that, between this Tuesday and Wednesday, DGComp should formally approve Novo Banco’s business plan and public guarantee.
The current Administrative Board, headed by Rui Cartaxo, will be replaced by the General Supervisory Board within the double-tier governance model the Americans aim to implement in former BES. This new Board will suffer the majority of changes: Byron Haynes has been appointed by Lone Star to head the new board that, by its statutes, will be able to dismiss the executive Board of Directors. The executive team will remain the same, at least for the next couple of months, but ECO knows there are some names being assessed and it is possible that some of the members of the General Supervisory Board might be transferred to the executive Board in the next couple of months.
Haynes, 51 years old, has a lot of experience on the financial sector. He worked at the Dutch ABN Amro Bank and was also an executive member of the Austrian bank BAWAG since September of 2009 and May of 2017. More recently, Haynes worked for the Austrian Stock Market and on the financial services company Navensis.
ECO was able to ascertain that Lone Star will also appoint Donald Quintin, Lone Star’s number two in Europe, for the General Supervisory Board. Prior to his functions in Lone Star, Quintin had worked with Merryl Lynch.
Benjamin Dickgieβer, Lone Star’s European acquisitions department director and member of the German bank IKB Board, and Kambiz Nourbakhsh, former-Goldman Sachs, are two of the names appointed for the new General Supervisory Board. All the names will have to be analysed by the European Central Bank (ECB).
