Johan Van Schalkwyk appointed Barclays Seychelles managing director |06 October 2015

Johan Van Schalkwyk is the new managing director of Barclays Bank (Seychelles) Limited.

Van Schalkwyk takes over from James Kinyany who has been the interim managing director since September 2014.

He brings to Barclays Seychelles vast industry experience having served in several senior roles in his banking career. He joined Absa in 2013 as head of physical distribution, responsible for the entire South African Branch Network and ATMs. He was also responsible for the Barclays Africa Branch Network restructuring and Branch Footprint optimisation initiatives which resulted in significant cost savings and productivity enhancements for the bank.

Mr Van Schalkwyk has extensive experience in retail banking. Prior to joining Absa, he was the head of card division, and later the head of retail banking business operations for Standard Bank in South Africa. He began his banking career with Trust Bank and held various executive positions at Nedbank.

He was a non-executive director on Bankserv’s board of directors where he served on multiple strategic executive planning and management committees.

The new Barclays Bank (Seychelles) managing director holds a B. Com (honours) in Business and Administration, and a B. Com in Business Economics and Industrial Psychology.

He will be a member of the Barclays Africa regional management executive committee.

Commenting on his appointment, Mr Van Schalkwyk said: “I am pleased to be given the opportunity to lead and grow this great business in Seychelles.  I look forward to working with my colleagues and other stakeholders as we continue to strengthen our market position, on our journey to becoming the ‘Go-To’ bank in the Seychelles.”

As for Mizinga Melu, chief executive of Barclays Africa regional management, she said “the appointment of Johan reiterates the importance of Barclays Seychelles to our One Africa strategy and we are excited that we have achieved significant milestones in our journey to become the ‘Go-To’ bank in Africa. Moving talented people across the business supports our talent mobility initiative to share and exchange skills and expertise on the African continent.”

Jean Weeling-Lee, chairman of Barclays Seychelles, commented: “The board welcomes Johan to Barclays Seychelles and looks forward to working with him in driving our strategy of becoming the ‘Go-To’ bank in the market. We would like to take this opportunity to thank James Kinyany for the steady leadership he has provided to the business since September last year and wish him the best in his next role in the Group.”