Accra, April 23, GNA - Banks, finance and private business companies have been charged to adhere to laid down business practices in order to justify the confidence their clients and customers repose in them.

Operators of these services are also to ensure that persons charged with the responsibility of sitting on their boards are people with high repute and capable of transforming the businesses they are engaged in. Mr John Saka Addo, Former Governor of the Bank of Ghana, made this call at a Public Lecture organised as part of the activities preceding the first congregation of the of the Methodist University College of Ghana.

Mr Addo is the Chairman of the Prudential Bank, a bank he formed after working for more than 40 years in the Ghanaian banking system. He said it was important that managements of companies and their boards operated in a transparent manner to sustain public confidence, adding, "it would be most improper if the people, who save money in the bank and other financial instruments, are made to believe that their monies are not safe".

Managements must be open to the boards and both should work closely with suggestions that go to require broad resolution and approval of all.

He noted that banks and private companies must ensure that persons appointed onto their boards were people of great repute with no criminal records whatsoever, adding, "it is only by such means that we can make the work of the board and management profitable and useful."

Mr Addo traced the history of banking in Ghana saying that the British West African Bank in the former Gold Coast was established to satisfy the needs of traders and the government of the time, "and as we make strides in today's Ghana, we should not lose sight of the emerging challenges that banking practice carries."