(Bloomberg) -- Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. appointed banker Walter Wassmer to the central bank’s rate-setting panel.
Wassmer will fill one of the two vacancies at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ Monetary Board, according to a statement on Thursday by the Presidential Communications Office. There were two departures recently from the board over an investigation into the presence of ghost employees in the institution.
Prior to his appointment, Wassmer was a consultant and non-executive director for BDO Unibank Inc., the country’s largest lender, where he was a senior executive for 25 years. He also worked at the Union Bank of the Philippines and Bancom Finance Corp. in the 1980s, according to the statement.
Wassmer will serve the unfinished terms of one of the resigned board members which end July 2026.
Marcos last month accepted the resignations of Bruce Tolentino and Anita Linda Aquino from the board as the central bank probed a whistleblower’s report that several staffers in their offices not been reporting for work for extended periods of time but were receiving salaries.
The central bank’s charter requires all decisions of the Monetary Board to have the concurrence of at least four members. The minimum four applies even for a move to close a bank, but five votes are needed to extend an emergency loan.
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