The Punjab cabinet has approved the appointment of Mr Syed Mohammad Talib Rizvi as president/chief executive officer (CEO) of the Bank of Punjab. Rizvi has got a sound reputation as a thorough banking professional, who is young, energetic and has a respectable family background. He has 23 years of experience in the banking sector and remained retail & commercial head/group head of large scale banks like Bank Alfalah and Habib Metropolitan Bank for around 12 years. He became the youngest retail & commercial head (in his mid-thirties) of the banking industry. Rizvi has had no known political affiliations, and has risen in the banking sector purely by dint of hard work and professional skills. He holds double master’s degrees, including an MBA. Further, he got foreign trainings from business schools of various prestigious Institutions like Insead, Stanford, IFC and others. He was last working as group executive at Habib Metropolitan Bank. He has a vast experience of handling asset and liability relationships for both multinationals and government entities, and has been actively involved in structuring syndicated and stand-alone financing for clients. He was the one to have introduced and executed the concept of branchless banking at Bank Alfalah, where he had complete management, operational and administrative charge of three regions, six areas, and 119 full-fledged branches of the bank. The Punjab cabinet’s decision to appoint Rizvi as president of the Bank of Punjab has been widely hailed in the banking circles.