VILNIUS - Darius Nedzinskas, chairman of the board of Hansabankas, said last week he would resign from Lithuania's second largest bank to take over as CEO of the Vakaru Skirstomieji Tinklai power distribution company beginning Feb. 2.
Nedzinskas, 30, said in a statement that he had accepted the position of managing director of VST, the western part of the national power grid.
The NDX consortium, established by owners of the retail giant VP Market, purchased a 77 percent holding in VST for 539.8 million litas (156.4 million euros). VST supplies electricity to over 656,000 consumers in the western regions of Kaunas, Klaipeda and Siauliai.
Nedzinskas became Hansabankas' board chairman in November 2003. He replaced Arunas Siksta, who took over as managing director of Lietuvos Telekomas, Lithuania's largest telecommunications company, early this year.
"I have been in the banking industry for 10 years, of which six years are in Hansabankas. I am taking on a new challenge. I want to emphasize that this is not a problem of the bank, but an issue of my personal motivation," Nedzinskas said.
Indrek Neivelt, chairman of the board of the Hansabank Group, has said that a new chairman of Hansabankas' board is to be appointed in January and that it would be one of his six deputies.
Hansabankas is currently Lithuania's second-biggest commercial bank with over 5 billion litas in assets. The bank, which wants to become the country's number one financial institution, was among the five local commercial banks that financed the VST privatization deal.
