Dominic Bruynseels
Chief Executive Officer
BCR

Dominic Bruynseels is the CEO of the largest bank in Romania, Romanian Commercial Bank. Banker with extensive international experience, Bruynseels joins BCR after a career of 27 years at Barclays Bank, one of the most prestigious financial groups worldwide. over this period he gained an extensive professional experience following a variety of UK-based branch, regional and head office roles as well as international positions.

Mr. Bruynseels started his banking career in 1980 as a management trainee and his first appointment was as assistant manager in a Barclays branch in the City of London. He went on to help establish the Business Sector Marketing Department, where he became led the development and promotion of new business products and segments, especially SMEs. The next challenge on his path was to manage a branch so as to bring it within only 6 months from an underperforming level to top sales level. Starting in 1989 he joined the large corporate side, combining best practices to improve profitability in the corporate market. Subsequently, his experience was much diversified by a new role in operational business and systems planning, which he fulfilled for 4 years.

In 1997 Mr. Bruynseels' work acquired international scope, once he took up the position of Finance Director for the Barclays Africa, Caribbean, Middle East and Latin American business. This strategic role entailed analyzing the business portfolio and aligning it to other areas of the Group. Two years after, Dominic Bruynseels became the chief executive officer of Barclays Africa and the Middle East, responsible for 12 operations across the region. From this position, he turned a collection of independent Barclays subsidiaries into the leading bank on the African continent, with a single brand and modern Retail and Corporate practices. During his tenure, he increased the bank's profitability by 100% while modernising the business. One of his biggest achievements was the acquisition in 2005 of Absa, a leading South-African bank - the biggest retail banking deal done globally that year.

Bruynseels was Absa's Board and Executive Committee Director during the integration period – as such, he managed to build capacity so that the bank's integration and financial objectives were achieved a year ahead of plan. Most recently Mr. Bruynseels served as Senior Executive Director of Barclays' Emerging Markets Division in Dubai. In his work throughout this period, Mr. Bruynseels was closely involved in volunteering and community work programs, which are particularly important to him. For 9 years he has been a director of Overseas Development Institute – the UK's leading think tank on development issues. Mr. Bruynseels holds a degree in Medieval History from Durham University and an MBA from Henley.