Shares in Kuwait's Gulf Bank will resume trading tomorrow after being suspended late last year, state news agency Kuna reported, after the lender appointed a new chairman.
"The central bank decides to resume the trading in shares of Gulf Bank starting the day after tomorrow," Kuna said.
The central bank halted trading in Gulf Bank in October until the end of a restructuring plan ordered by the government after the bank was hit by losses from currency derivative trades.
Gulf Bank, in which sovereign wealth fund Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) owns a 16 per cent stake, appointed former KIA head Ali Al Bader as its new chairman, the lender said in a statement on the bourse website.
Former Kuwaiti finance minister, Mahmud Al Nouri, and bank's former chairman Omar Kutayba Al Ghanim also joined the board, according to a statement on the Kuwait Stock Exchange website yesterday.
"I am confident that the bank enters 2009 with a clean slate," Kutayba Al Ghanim, the bank's former chairman, told the annual general meeting on April 11, according to an e-mailed statement. "Improvements that will result from restructuring within the bank will take time," said Al Ghanim, who announced his departure during the meeting.
He said the lender has been fully restored through recapitalisation and was "back on its feet, rapidly regaining its momentum in the marketplace, and has a bright and exciting future".
Kuwait Central Bank Governor Sheikh Salem AbdulAziz Al Sabah said October 26 last year, that Gulf Bank suffered losses from currency derivatives trading after a decline in the value of the euro versus the dollar. The threat of default prompted the governor to offer protection to Gulf Bank's depositors, as some customers rushed to withdraw funds. The shares were suspended.
Shareholders approved in December a rescue plan worked out by the central bank to raise 375 million dinars (Dh4.73bn) in an emergency rights issue to cover derivatives losses of the same amount.
Gulf Bank's troubles prompted the government last year to guarantee all deposits in Kuwaiti banks in a bid to restore confidence and calm fears that the sector's exposure to the global credit crisis ran deeper than first thought.
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