AYALA-LED Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) on Thursday said its board has appointed Gil Buenaventura, who is currently senior executive vice president, as chief operating officer effective January 1, 2010.

The 56-year-old executive has served as head of BPI’s corporate-banking group since 1996, and is responsible for over P200 billion in loans to top-tier corporations, the middle market, and small and medium enterprises.

I WAS amazed at the wisdom of some of the business leaders of large global companies on how they have moved their company from just mere survival to one of significant growth. I’m sure most of these leaders were able to formulate these impressive strategies because they refuse to settle for mediocrity despite the crisis in the global economy.

Lately, economists are saying that the US economy is on the recovery, and we all know that the US economy has a great impact on the worldwide economic recovery.  In fact, at the early part of 2009, most of the economic forecasters see start of recovery sometime in 2010. Others were even more pessimistic, and predicted it could even be beyond 2010.

CITI, the largest foreign bank in the Philippines, is looking to further expand its loan portfolio for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) up to 10 percent of its total loans in compliance with the regulatory requirement.

At present the bank meets about half of the required level, according Citi Philippines country head Sanjiv Vohra.