Bank of Cyprus finally gets a new board

Bank of Cyprus, the island’s biggest lender, finally has a board of directors ending a month of uncertainty after the bank’s previous administration was sacked over an excessive exposure to the Greek market and an administrator was appointed to undertake a recapitalisation plan.
None of the past board members have been recalled and many directors have no previous banking experience.
The bank needs about 10 bln euros after it was forced to absorb Popular Laiki Bank as part of a Eurogroup experiment that went wrong and stopped liquidity from the European Central Bank.
The process to select a new board followed two weeks of hard bargaining and vetting between the new government that inherited a bankrupt state and sought a bailout that included closing down the island’s second largest bank and grabbing just over a third of large deposits.
The new members of the board are: Constantinos Damtsas, Lenia Georgiadou, Costas Hadjipapas from the trade union Etyk, Philippos Mannaris, Sophoclis Michaelides, Lambros Papadopoulos, Andreas Persianis, Andreas Poetis, former Finance Ministry Director General Panicos Pouros, Erol Riza, Savvas Savvides, banker Takis Taoushanis, academic George Theocharides and Michalis Zannetides.
The chairman will be elected by the members at the next board meeting on Tuesday, April 30.