Nihal Fonseka was elected as the new Chairman of the CSE. He succeeds Mr.Eraj Wijesinghe as the CSE chairman.

Mr.fonseka is a career banker. After 23 years with HSBC in various positions he took over as the Chief Executive Officer of DFCC Bank, the pioneer development bank, in January 2000. He holds a BSc, from the University of Ceylon, Colombo and is a Fellow of the Charted Institute of Bankers, U.K.

He is a Director of the Commercial Bank of Ceylon Ltd., the Credit Information Bureau of Sri Lanka and has been a Director of the Colombo Stock Exchange since 2002.

He has been a member since 2004 of the Financial Sector, Taxation and Legal Reforms Clusters and Co Chair of the Capital Markets Cluster of the National Council for Economic Development (NCED). In 2006 he was appointed a member of the National Payment Council by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.

Mr.Fonseka is also a Member of the Governing Board of National Institute of Business Management and Post Graduate Institute of Management, Sri Lanka as well as Chairman of the Banking & Finance sub-committee of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and Chairman of the Banking, Insurance & Financial Services Committee of the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka. He also currently serves as a member of the Committee appointed by the Institute of Charted Accountants, Sri Lanka, to formulate revisions to the Code of Best Practice on Corporate Governance of listed companies.

Mr.Fonseka was recently named the “Outstanding CEO of the Year” by the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP), headquarted in the Philippines.