Pakistan Steel Mills CEO replaced

KARACHI: Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Pakistan Steel Mills (PS) Imtiaz Ahmed Khan Lodhi has been removed by the mills’ board of directors in an apparent bid to improve the financial position of the troubled industrial giant, PS officials said.

The board appointed Wasif Mahmood as the acting CEO in place of Lodhi in a meeting held in Islamabad on Friday.

Lodhi had been serving as the acting CEO for the last seven months. He had been in Turkey for the past few days and returned on Friday.

Chairman Fazlullah Qureshi is heading the board of directors of PS, which was constituted in March last year.

Lodhi took over as director finance of PS in October 2009 on a two-year contract. Later, he was also given the charge of acting CEO on July 6, 2010 following health problems faced by then CEO Malik Asrar.

Lodhi had been under pressure to improve the financial position of the organisation which had deteriorated before his taking over as acting CEO.

In an interview with The Express Tribune around three months ago, Lodhi expressed confidence that the mill’s condition will stabilise but it will take time. “My team hopes to make the PS profitable by the end of 2011,” he said.

The new acting CEO is the senior most engineer of PS and was working as director production. He has been serving the organisation for around 32 years at different important posts.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th,  2011.