The CEO of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), Ermias Eshetu, has tendered his resignation, according to a report in Ethiopia’s English weekly newspaper The Reporter. He will stay until a successor is found.
His decision took people by surprise, as he was publicizing the new working procedures he was planning to introduce in ECX. The resignation came after a stringent evaluation by the Board, which lasted the whole day. “The evaluation dwelled on the performance of the trading floor (ECX) and on the issue of who should leave and who should remain in office. The CEO tendered his resignation letter in the wake of the in-depth evaluation,” sources told The Reporter. It is part of Government efforts “to identify the weaknesses of ECX and reform the organization”.
The ECX management declined to comment to The Reporter.
The ECX was founded by agricultural economist Eleni Gabre-Madhin in 2008. Ermias had joined the ECX in January 2015, taking over from Anteneh Abraham, former vice president of Abyssinia Bank, who had resigned due to illness.
Electronic trading on ECX began in July 2015 and by January 2017 had replaced 89% of the open outcry trading, using a bespoke software built by Ethiopian engineers. According to a news report, ECX had started commissioning e-trading centres in different regions, including 3 set to be operational in the second quarter of 2017 and 4 were to follow. In the 2015-16 fiscal year (to July), the exchange traded 632,000 metric tons of commodities, worth ETB23 bn. They trained 760 users.
Ermias, 42, previously served Zemen Bank as Vice President for Marketing and Corporate Services since 2007. He lived for 20 years in UK, gaining technical and leadership experience at firms such as global IT giants IBM, Alcatel, Orange and MicroStrategy. He has a Master’s degree in international business from University of Manchester Management Business School and a Bachelor’s with honours in Computation from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.
