BoQ lassoes CBA agribusiness chief
George Liondis - PUBLISHED: 10 hours 38 MINUTES AGO - UPDATE: 6 hours 3 MINUTES AGO - 26 April 2012
Bank of Queensland has poached another Commonwealth Bank of Australia executive as it looks to the agricultural sector in a bid to turn around a run of plummeting profits and soaring bad debts.
Doug Snell, formerly the head of regional and agribusiness banking for CBA in Queensland and the Northern Territory, will join BoQ next month.
He is the fourth former CBA executive to defect to BoQ this year and will spearhead a bigger push into agricultural lending by the regional bank.
BoQ chief executive Stuart Grimshaw pinpointed the agricultural sector as an area for future growth after posting a $91 million first-half loss earlier this month after a sharp increase in bad debts as the property market in south-east Queensland sours.
“We are making sure we do focus on the key areas of return, such as the small and medium enterprises and agri spaces,” he said.
A former high-ranking CBA executive himself, Mr Grimshaw took over the top job at BoQ in November and has set about shaking up his executive team.
Last month he lured Jon Sutton, the former managing director of CBA subsidiary BankWest, to the group as its new chief operating officer. Another high-ranking CBA executive, Peter Deans, also left to join BoQ as chief risk officer.
In February, Mr Grimshaw poached Brendan White from CBA to run BoQ’s business lending arm.
“We have had a number of recent appointments to the leadership team, which are bringing energy to it,” Mr Grimshaw said.
BoQ has moved to raise $450 million by issuing shares to investors in a bid to bolster its balance sheet after being hit by rising bad debts. The retail component of the capital raising closed on Tuesday.
The Australian Financial Review