FORMER leading banker and an ex-member of the NI Policing Board Colm McKenna has been appointed as interim chair of the board of Invest NI.
He succeeds Rose Mary Stalker, who stood aside from the chair's role at the end of January, just weeks after a scathing independent report exposed dysfunction at a senior leadership level at the jobs creation agency.
The chair's role command's an annual remuneration of £45,535, with a time commitment of four days a month.
But Mr McKenna - whose appointment has been ratified by the Department for the Economy in the absence of a sitting minister - will take on the role for nine months (up to November 30).
The Department has begun work on a competition to appoint a substantive chair to the board, and this will allow time for that competition to complete.
Mr McKenna retired from a long and successful career in financial services in 2008, which included leadership positions in corporate treasury, international banking, trade finance and marketing.
He is a former chair of the NI Public Sector Chairs Forum and the NI Confederation for Health and Social Care.
He has also served as chair and non-executive director across a range of large public sector organisations including chair of South Eastern HSC Trust (2008-2019), chair of the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (2014-2019), chair of the NI Food Advisory Committee and board member for the NI Food Standards Agency (2016-2022).
Mr McKenna also served as non-executive director and/or chair of audit committee at the NI Assembly Secretariat (2010-2016), NI Courts and Tribunal Services (2011-2019), ILEX URC Ltd (2010-2016) and the NI Policing Board (2018-2022).
He was a Department for the Economy non-executive director from 2017 until just this month.
In January a report into Invest NI, led by ex-BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons, found that "dysfunction and division" at leadership level was harming the agency's economic performance.
The panel’s 17 recommendations, published across 371 pages, called for “urgent” and “profound change” within Invest NI, which has yet to formally respond to the findings.
