SINGAPORE: India-born Viswanathan Shankar, Standard Chartered Bank’s executive director will leave the group by the end of this month to start his own venture. The 57-year-old banker will stand down from the board with effect from April 30 and leave the company thereafter.
He said, he will start his own private equity firm focused on Asia, Africa and the Middle East, based out of Singapore and Dubai. Having spent 13 years at the Standard Chartered, Shankar, now a Singapore citizen, said, he had started a number of businesses for the bank and “has always been an entrepreneur in the company”.
“Now I want to see if I can be an entrepreneur with the support of a big company,” The Straits Times today quoted Shankar as saying.
“No time is the right time and success is not guaranteed,” Shankar, who has been in the banking industry for 36 years, said.
As group executive director, Shankar heads the London- based bank’s business in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. He has worked for Bank of America for almost two decades, and was a member of Singapore’s Economic Strategies Committee headed by Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
He said, while his departure from the Bank is on amicable terms and his resignation “is simply about opportunities for me outside”, the banking veteran’s departure follows a dramatic boardroom shake-up at the bank.
The Bank’s Chief Executive Peter Sands will step down in June and chairman John Peace will leave the board some time next year, according to the bank’s announcement made in February.
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