The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has approved the appointment of Mr. Henry James Semenitari as the managing director and chief executive officer of Unity Bank Plc.
The approval was communicated in a January 9 letter to the bank.
With the approval, Semenitari will be replacing Rislanudeen Muhammad, who had been holding forte in acting capacity since the departure of Mr. Ado Yakubu Wanka, who resigned in August 2013.
Semenitari has valued and consistent banking experience in operations, internal control, commercial and retail banking, consumer banking, corporate banking (Energy) among others acquired from various banks over a 22-year career.
Among the banks he has worked are First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Zenith Bank, Diamond Bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA), ACB International Bank and Continental Trust Bank.
He has held senior management positions in UBA Plc as an assistant general manager, Commercial and Retail Banking Group; general manager (Credit and Marketing) in ACB International Bank Plc; acting managing director/CEO, ACB International Bank Plc; executive director (Business Development) in Continental Trust Bank Limited and general manager, Afribank Nigeria Plc, in charge of Consumer and Retail Banking with the responsibility of supervising and developing business activities across over 150 branch network.
He was also an executive director, Retail and Enterprise Banking at FCMB Plc with responsibility for developing and growing Retail and Enterprise Banking business across the entire branch network.
Semenitari’s recognised strengths are in business process re-engineering and design with specialisation in strategic process enterprise management and integration of business process models with Information Communication Technology (ICT) to drive business at product and strategic business unit levels.
In addition, he has development and implementation experience of major banking applications such as Micro Banker/Flexcube, Phoenix, Bank Master, SAP (Systems Application and Product), Globus and Finacle Banking Application etc.
Aged 50, Semenitari holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Lagos and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from International Graduate School of Management, University of Navara (I.E.S.E) Barcelona, Spain.
He is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School, Advance Management Programme (AMP173) in Boston, United States. He is also an alumnus of Cambridge Judge Business School, Advanced Leadership Programme (ALP 1), Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.
He is married with four children.