Global Bank Board Suspends 18 as Deposit Probe Widens

Jul 25 , 2026. By BEZAWIT HULUAGER ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER )

Global Bank's Board has suspended 18 executives as an investigation into its deposit and liquidity practices widens. Its President, Tesfaye Boru (PhD), who had delegated Corporate Banking Chief, Sahilemichael Mekonnen, to run the bank while abroad, is among those suspended. The Board, chaired by Yoseph Getachew, has since named Sahilemichael acting president.

Global Bank's Board of Directors have overhauled top management, after suspending several executives as an investigation into the Bank's deposit and liquidity practices widens.

Tesfaye Boru (PhD), the Bank’s president, had delegated the Chief Corporate Banking Officer, Sahilemichael Mekonnen, to run the Bank while being abroad. However, the Board, chaired by Yoseph Getachew, later dissolved the delegation and named Sahilemichael acting President.

The shake-up followed an investigation by the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) into the alleged rapid withdrawal of a time deposit estimated to reach hundreds of millions of Birr, a figure that varies among insiders.

Although regulators at the NBE have taken no known action, the Board launched its own inquiry at shareholders' initiative. Its risk and compliance and audit teams have run the review, reporting the issues to the NBE, which declined to comment.

As of last week, 18 executives, including Tesfaye and a board member, had been suspended.

Board members have declined to discuss their findings.

The dispute spilt into the open on Thursday evening, when the Board summoned 50 major shareholders to the Skylight Hotel on Africa Avenue (Bole Road). Disagreement flared over the participation of Wubshet Zegeye, chief retail banking officer and a board director, among those suspended by the Board.

According to people familiar with the meeting, it was adjourned with an agenda to replace the suspended management team. According to a senior executive of the Bank, who asked not to be named, for he is not authorised to discuss the issue publicly, the divisions should never have reached this point and that the allegations were less serious than portrayed.

"They could have handled it administratively," he said.

The upheaval comes despite Global Bank (Ethiopia) posting a year of strong growth from its operation in the financial year 2024/25. By June 2025, its assets had expanded by 42pc to 34.43 billion Br, while deposits climbed by 41pc to 25.75 billion Br, the largest annual rise in the Bank's history, since 2012.

Loans and advances reached 20.38 billion Br after growing by 4.67 billion Br, while profit after tax jumped by 56pc to 756.6 million Br. Interest income increased to 4.27 billion Br from 3.11 billion Br, but interest expenses grew faster, to 2.64 billion Br from 1.63 billion Br.

Global Bank’s five-year record is otherwise one of rapid expansion, with assets up from 11.63 billion Br, deposits almost tripled from 8.7 billion Br, and paid-up capital lifted from 1.39 billion Br to five billion Br, clearing the NBE's threshold before its June 2026 deadline.

The pattern points to a governance problem, according to Tilahun Girma, a former banker at Oromia Bank and the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE). According to him, NBE's recent scrutiny of deposit and liquidity practices exposed systemic gaps at some commercial banks.

"What we’re seeing is banks relying on short-term and high-cost time deposits as a fire extinguisher when liquidity tightens, an expensive product that masks deeper asset-liability mismatches," he said, warning that such deposits had reached about 20pc in some cases.

Banks under pressure buy discounted funds from large depositors and senior accounts, paying spreads that erode profitability and shift repayment obligations onto the Bank.

Tilahun argued that the internal watchdogs should have caught it.

“The Asset-Liability Committee (ALCO), the risk and compliance units and the Board itself ought to have detected and curbed such practices,” he said. “Later, regulatory inquiries should judge whether the response was appropriate.”

He criticised lapses in the Board's supervision and urged the NBE to tighten corporate governance standards.

"Boards must include independent directors with audit and banking expertise," he said, contending that when management fails, the Board, not executives alone, should be held accountable. He cautioned, though, against treating the Central Bank as an untouchable overseer that substitutes for strong internal governance.

For now, Global Bank has swapped its leadership and opened its books to its own investigators, but the emergency meetings and personnel moves are, in Tilahun's view, necessary yet incomplete.

“What the NBE and the Board do next, on board composition, the enforcement of ALCO and risk mandates, and the protection of depositors, will decide whether a profitable bank has caught a governance lapse early or exposed a deeper fault,” Tilahun told Fortune.

PUBLISHED ON Jul 25,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1369]