(Reuters) – Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the country’s No.1 lender, said on Wednesday that Chair Catherine Livingstone would retire in August after more than five years in the role.
She would be replaced by Paul O’Malley, who joined the bank’s board in 2019 and served as the chief executive and managing director of BlueScope Steel Ltd for a decade.
Livingstone oversaw the bank’s operations during a tumultuous period in which a government-backed inquiry uncovered widespread misconduct in the financial services industry and the COVID-19 pandemic hammered companies across the globe.
Before taking the role at CBA, she had served as the chairperson of Australia’s biggest telecom firm Telstra Corp and the top boss of hearing device maker Cochlear Ltd.
O’Malley will take over as chairman on August 10, at a time when central banks globally are planning on raising interest rates to tame unruly inflation.
(Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
