Mystery surrounds the reasons underpinning the sudden resignation of BNK Banking Corporation chief executive Simon Lyons.
The BNK board issued a terse six paragraph statement to the ASX on Tuesday confirming the departure of Lyons and the appointment of deputy chairman Don Koch as the acting CEO.
Since 2016 when Lyons took the executive reins of Goldfields Credit Union, the WA-based company has been pursuing an ambitious expansion strategy aimed at establishing the group as a national player in the wider financial services market.
The ASX statement gave no indication of the motives for Lyons’ resignation and only scant recognition of his profound impact on BNK.
“BNK chairman, Mr Jon Sutton thanked Mr Lyons for his contribution to the growth of the business over the past four years and wishes him well for the future,” the board said in the statement.
During his four year stint at the helm Lyons drove several reorganisations of the group including the transformational merger in 2018 with mortgage aggregator, Finsure.
The union of the rebranded Goldfields Money and Finsure followed a tortuous battle to fight off rival bidding from Kim Cannon’s Firstmac.
Lyons also invested heavily in digital technology in the hope that it would eventually help to build a national customer base in retail banking.
However, the reality of BNK’s financial performance never seemed to match Lyon’s ambition.
And returns to shareholders were mostly abysmal following the defining merger.
Since April 2018 when the share price peaked at around A$1.63, the company’s scrip has lost more than two thirds of its value.
It closed down 3 per cent to 50 cents on Tuesday amid a strong rally across the rest of the banking sector.
BNK is in the process of entering what Lyons described in recent investor presentations as the fourth phase of the company’s evolution in which an API digital platform would be used to expand banking products across Australia.
Two weeks ago Lyons defined the fourth stage as one of “accelerated portfolio growth” in which the group would increase its “capital base via deposits, NIM expansion and a diversified funding platform”.
Such messaging might not have impressed Sutton and the other members of the BNK board.
Lyons immediate replacement, Don Koch, is a former chief executive of ING’s successful banking arms in Australia and Italy.
The company has embarked on a global search for a permanent CEO.