Simon Dornoo, who formerly headed GCB Bank, has been appointed to lead the team of experts from accounting and auditing firm, KPMG, to revive and stabilise uniBank Ghana Limited.
With 25 years experience in banking, Mr. Dornoo will act in that capacity over the six months that uniBank is expected to be under administration,
According to a press statement from the auditing firm KPMG, the former Managing Director of GCB Bank and his team will be expected to audit the operations of the bank and recommend a way forward for the central bank.
KPMG, the official administrator of uniBank, also said in the 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.”
The revival of UniBank has become important because it was declared insolvent by the Bank of Ghana on March 20, and its need to be brought back to regulatory compliance.
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.
Mr. Dornoo, for six years worked to bring back then Ghana Commercial Bank which was challenged to profitable ways including rebranding it to become GCB Bank before he resigned in March 2016.
He then returned to KPMG, where he started his professional career in 1985, as a consultant.
Prior to GCB, he worked for Barclays Bank in Ghana and then Barclays Plc. in UK where he was Finance Director for Barclays Africa businesses in Africa and the Indian Ocean.
He has served on a number of boards mainly in the financial services sector and he is the immediate past president of the Ghana Bankers Association.
Simon Dornoo has an MBA from Manchester Business School and he is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana and is also a member of ACI, a worldwide association of Wholesale Financial Market professionals.
Simon Dornoo was appointed as Non-Executive Director on the Board of Nyaho Medical Centre effective January 2017.
UniBank, a wholly indigenous lender, was put under administration on March 20 with KPMG as the official administrators which 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 percent 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.
