Clyne moves Fahour aside

National Australia Bank will adopt a peculiar arrangement of its top management team with the decision of the new group chief executive, Cameron Clyne, to also take on the task of CEO of the Australian region.

That leaves the incumbent, Ahmed Fahour - an executive director of the bank - without a defined portfolio. According to a company media release yesterday Fahour will work on "operational, commercial and strategic challenges".

NAB does lack a head of strategy at the moment since George Frazis opted earlier this month to cross to Westpac and run that bank's New Zealand businesses.

On the other hand Clyne may regard strategy as being a core task he will look after, an impression created by the market briefing conducted by him and the bank's chair, Michael Chaney, when confirming Clyne's selection as CEO-designate in July.

Clyne, who worked mainly for management consultancies (though working on banking assignments) before joining NAB less than five years ago does not have a lot of operational experience and may want to interact more closely with Australian regional management than might be practical if someone else occupied the role of local CEO.

He may also regard the performance of the Australian business as less acceptable than do the outgoing managers (Fahour, and the retiring managing director of NAB, John Stewart).

While the Australian region has underpinned the bank's earnings growth there may be unease over how effectively NAB has exploited the opportunities created by the fade out of many non-bank and foreign bank competitors in the current climate.

NAB has made a fair fist of growing the liability side of the balance sheet over the course of the credit crunch but has lost market share on the asset side. This was partly a legacy of earlier tactical decisions taken by Fahour and informed by an assessment of the credit risks during the closing stages of the long credit boom.

The result is that NAB is losing a lot of ground in key product markets in Australia such as housing lending at a time that major banks, but mainly Commonwealth and Westpac, are enjoying unprecedented strength.

As for Ahmed Fahour, he is widely believed to have actively sought over the last year, and failed to find, a chief executive job (and in Melbourne if at all possible). There's talk of Fahour turning down job offers in Dubai (where he serves on the board of the stock exchange) and his continued tenure at NAB seems unlikely.

NAB already has one mentor executive director in Michael Ullmer, who owns the title of deputy CEO, having handed the job of chief financial officer to Mark Joiner a year ago.