Ahmed Abitew replaced Yinager Dessie (PhD), who was recently assigned to be governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia, as Board chairman of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia. When Dr. Yinager was appointed governor of the National Bank last June by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD), he was automatically discharged from his chairmanship at the bank.

Sintayehu Woldemichael (PhD), director general of the Public Financial Institutions Supervisory Agency, assigned Ahmed to the post effective September 19, 2018.

Ahmed led the Policy Study & Research Center, a state research organization, since last April. Before assuming his new appointment, he had served as the minister of Industry. Prior to his appointment at the federal government, he was the deputy administrator of the Amhara Regional State and head of the region’s Industry & Urban Development Bureau. Since 1992, he held several posts within the Amhara Regional State, including the Finance & Economic Development Bureau. Ahmed is still a board member of Dashen Breweries.

The bank was being reorganized since May under a program developed by Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. Out of the bank’s thirty two thousand employees, three thousand employees with managerial portfolios were affected by the reorganization.

About Commercial Bank of Ethiopia

The history of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) dates back to the establishment of the State Bank of Ethiopia in 1942. CBE was legally established as a share company in 1963. In 1974, CBE merged with the privately owned Addis Ababa Bank. It has more than 1280 branches stretched across the country. It has assets of 565.5 billion Birr as on June 30th 2018. CBE has more than 18.8 million account holders and the number of Mobile and Internet Banking users also reached more than 1,736,768 as of June 30th 2018 . Active ATM card holders reached more than 4.4 million.

Source: Addis Fortune and Commerical Bank of Ethiopia Official Webiste