Simon Dornoo leads team to revive uniBank

Maxwell Akalaare Adombila Business News Mar - 26 - 2018 , 18:41

A former Managing Director of the GCB Bank, Mr Simon Dornoo, is to lead a team of experts from accounting and auditing firm, KPMG to revive and stabilise uniBank Ghana Limited.

The revival is to help bring the bank, which was declared insolvent by the Bank of Ghana on March 20, “back to regulatory compliance.”

KPM, the official administrator of the troubled uniBank, said in a press statement that Mr Dornoo had been engaged as an executive representative to lead “the management team to stabilise and bring the bank back to regulatory compliance.”

He will act in that capacity over the next six months, within which he and the team will be expected to audit the operations of the bank and recommend a way forward for the central bank.

Mr Dornoo, an experienced banker with 25 years in service, resigned from GCB Bank in March 2016.

He then returned to KPMG, where he started his professional career in 1985, as a consultant to the Ghana unit of the multinational firm.

In his current position, he is expected to bring to bear his decades of professional expertise in banking and accounting to help establish the root cause of the bank’s predicaments and initiate measures to reverse its fortunes.

Beyond GCB, where he was MD for six years, Mr Dornoo has also worked with Barclays Bank Ghana and CAL Bank Limited.

uniBank, a wholly indigenous lender, was put under administration on March 20 with KPMG as the official administrators.

It was the anticlimax of two years of difficulties, culminating in capital adequacy ratio of negative 24.92 per cent compared to eh regulatory requirement of not less than 10 per cent, a reserve ratio of one per cent and a heavy exposure to BoG to the tune of GH¢2.2 billion.

In spite of being under administration, the bank’s branches are opened for business but under the guidance and management of the Simon Dornoo-led team from KPMG.