CEO Hourican on Bank of Cyprus board, 2nd RBS banker hired

The Bank of Cyprus has appointed its CEO John Hourican to its board of directors, while board member Adonis Papaconstantinou joins the Committee for Nominations and Corporate Governance.
The committee is headed by the bank’s chairman, Christis Hassapis, and includes Marinos Gialeli, Marios Kalochoritis, Konstantinos Katsaros, Marios Yiannas and Andreas Yiasemides.
Meanwhile, news reports earlier this week said that the bank has hired a second former senior banker from Royal Bank of Scotland to lead its restructuring following the bailout.
Euan Hamilton, former deputy chief executive of the RBS "non-core division", has joined the bank as a consultant to look at the delinquency, restructuring and recoveries of loans.
Getting to grips with BOCY's bad loans is seen as the key issue for its new chief executive Hourican, the former RBS investment bank boss who was appointed in October.
Bank of Cyprus was the first bank in the euro zone to force depositors to lose some of their savings to recapitalise the lender after it was crippled by its exposure to Greece and forced Cyprus to seek a 10 bln euro bailout from the Troika of the IMF, the EU and the ECB.
It also assumed the assets of second-biggest Laiki Popular, which has since been wound down and its “legacy” shareholders now control 18% of BOCY.
Bank of Cyprus's recovery could be helped by the creation of a "bad bank" to focus purely on running down about 7 bln euros of non-performing loans and other problem loans, some industry observers and officials said.
In his last role at RBS, Hamilton was responsible for overseeing the sale or run-down of more than 75 bln pounds of non-core assets over 18 months.
He left RBS in 2010 and joined Cramond Capital Partners in Edinburgh. Hamilton also worked as head of RBS's leveraged finance and sponsor coverage.
Hourican also worked in the bank's leveraged finance arm. He left RBS in April after the bank was fined for manipulating Libor interest rates. RBS said Hourican, who had run RBS's investment bank since 2008, had no involvement in, or knowledge of, the Libor misconduct.