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Dinesh Weerakkody to be replaced by Samantha Rajapaksa as HNB Chairman

30 Mar 2021

By The Sunday Morning Business   The Chairman of one of the leading private banks in the country, Hatton National Bank (HNB), Dinesh Weerakkody is set to be replaced by Samantha Rajapaksa, The Morning Business exclusively learns.  The appointment is expected to be announced following the Bank’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), which will be held today (30) at HNB Towers.  Rajapaksa is a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants of UK, and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing of UK. He also holds an MBA from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura.  He is the Group Managing Director of Associated Motorways Ltd., a fully-owned subsidiary of the Al-Futtaim Group of the United Arab Emirates. He also currently holds directorships on the Boards of Asiri Hospitals Holdings PLC and Asiri Surgical Hospital PLC, where he also chairs the respective Audit Committees.  He is also a Non-Executive Director at AMW Capital Leasing and Finance PLC. He began his career at Ernst & Young. He went on to serve as Director/General Manager at Informatics International.  Thereafter, he took on the appointment of Director/CEO of CF Venture Fund Ltd. He was also appointed as a Group Director of Central Finance Co. Plc during the same period. He thereon took a posting overseas as Senior Project Manager at AT&T Inc., USA He returned to Sri Lanka in 2008 to take up the appointment as Group Director of Kshatriya Holdings PLC, and thereafter joined as a Group Director of the Softlogic Group, responsible for group business development and as Director/CEO of Softlogic Communications Ltd. handling the Nokia operations in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. He joined AMW in April 2012. Appointed as Director in June 2017 and Chairman in May 2018, Dinesh Weerakkody is the Chairman of the National Human Resource Development Council of Sri Lanka and Cornucopia Sri Lanka. He holds several honorary Advisory roles in the current Government. He was also the Chairman of the Government-appointed Committee to review the Banking Sector and NBFI consolidation, and the Committee appointed to review the Budgetary Allocation for Education. He is a former Chairman of the Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC and the Employees’ Trust Fund Board of Sri Lanka. He was also a Director of DFCC Bank. When contacted, Samantha Rajapaksa refused to comment but added that “nothing has been confirmed”, as of last evening.  Meanwhile, Weerakkody denied these reports, when asked whether Rajapaksa is going to replace him.  “He is not even on the HNB Board. You will get to know after the AGM tomorrow (30),” Weerakkody told us yesterday (29). 


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