Muhseen appointed new Chairman at Commercial Bank; Raja as Deputy from 22 April

Muhseen Sharhan

Raja Senanayake

The Commercial Bank PLC yesterday announced the appointment of Muhseen Sharhan as the new Chairman with effect from 22 April.

A decision to this effect was made at a special board meeting held yesterday. Sharhan is the incumbent Deputy Chairman. He succeeds Prof. A. K. W. Jayawardane, who retires on 21 April having assumed office in February 2022 and serving the Board since April 2015.

The Commercial Bank Board also resolved to appoint Raja Senanayake as the Deputy Chairman from 22 April. He joined the Board in September 2020.

Muhseen is a senior Investment Banker with extensive experience in areas of Mergers and Acquisitions, Corporate Finance and Capital Markets. He has served in a senior capacity working with company boards and senior leadership teams of financial institutions across Asia to help drive their strategic corporate agenda and roadmaps. He previously worked in best-in-class global investment banks, such as Credit Suisse, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and J. P. Morgan in leading regional coverage roles.

Muhseen’s most immediate previous roles were as Managing Director, Head of South East Asia of Financial Institutions Group (FIG) and Head of Asia Insurance at Credit Suisse, based in Singapore. In his Investment Banking career spanning over 20 years, Muhseen has completed landmark mergers and capital raising transactions in excess of $ 100 billion. The Asia FIG sectors team at Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse has won the “FIG Asia House of the Year” awards from the Asset magazine for several years under his leadership. Multiple transactions he led have been awarded as best country deals and best financial sector capital raise transactions.

He is credited with some leading research reports including reports on Banking sector efficiency, currency depreciation and budget deficit in his role as Head of Sri Lanka Banking Sector Research Coverage and Lead Economist at Jardine Fleming. He has also worked at Standard Chartered Bank in the Corporate Banking Division, where he started out as a Management Trainee and at Rodman and Renshaw Stock and Commodities Broker based in Chicago.

Muhseen has experience at the policy level, working as a Team Leader at the National Council for Economic Development (NCED) under the Ministry of Finance as well as a Director at the Task Force to Rebuild the Nation (TAFREN), the Presidential Task Force for rebuilding the economy after the 2004 Tsunami. He holds a Masters in Economics from the University of Colombo, a Bachelor of Business Administration (Hons) from Western Michigan University and has completed the Corporate Finance training program with JPMorgan in New York.

In coming Deputy Chairman Senanayake is a Fellow Member of CA Sri Lanka with 30 years of post-qualifying experience and holds a B.Com (Special) degree from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura with a second class upper division Pass and a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Management from the PIM of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. 

Having completed his articles at Ernst & Young and qualifying as a Chartered Accountant, he joined Singer Industries (Ceylon) Plc In 1991 as the Financial Accountant. In 1994. Senanayake joined Commercial Bank of Ceylon Plc as the Senior Manager Finance and worked for 13 years and was the Assistant General Manager (Finance & Planning) when he resigned. He also served as the Chief Financial Officer at the Nations Trust Bank PLC.

He works for Smart Media the Annual Report Company and is currently heading the Smart Academy, an International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) Accredited Training Foundation Partner. Senanayake is also an Independent Non-Executive Director of Serendib Finance Ltd., a fully owned subsidiary of Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC since October 2014, an Independent Non-Executive Director of Senkadagala Finance PLC since April 2017 and a Director of Virtual Capital Technologies (M) Ltd., a software development company that specialises In enterprise solutions in the real estate, retail and telecom spaces catering to the New Zealand and the Australian market since August 2017.

Senanayake is passionate about and possesses extensive domain knowledge on the financial services industry, financial management and corporate reporting In particular, including such aspects as risk management, capital management, corporate governance, compliance, sustainability and integrated reporting. Besides many other local and overseas training programs, he has undergone training on banking and finance with Euromoney and on general management with the National University of Singapore.