As CEO of Nepal’s largest development bank, Siddhant has initiated ground-breaking income generating activities, in partnership with international organisations, such as climate financing that allowed 5,000 rural households to make a sustainable living by saving US$240,000.
Siddhant Raj Pandey
Siddhant is one of the few Nepalis to have an in-depth international exposure and experience in banking and finance. Between 1998 and 2003, as vice-president for Merrill Lynch International Bank and then as director for Asia-Pacific for Riggs Bank in London, he advised multinationals and high net-worth individuals. He also served as economist for FAO in Rome to the team working on food security in Sudan.
As CEO of Nepal’s largest development bank, Siddhant has initiated ground-breaking income generating activities, in partnership with international organisations, such as climate financing that allowed 5,000 rural households to make a sustainable living by saving US$240,000. This initiative will have a remarkable impact on environment as it helped reduce the use of kerosene by 270,000 litres per year. Similarly, he put a huge effort to provide access to finance by promoting creation of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Through micro-credit financing, in the last eight years, Siddhant encouraged hundreds of entrepreneurs to form SMEs around the country contributing to the wealth creation.
Siddhant has been a leading player in economic reform and the development of capital market in Nepal. His thorough research work ‘Economic Liberalisation in Nepal: Dimensions of the Transformation’ in 1995 has been produced as a reference document. He handled Nepal’s largest IPO, which, till date, is the first case of a public institution in the financial sector being privatised. He successfully lobbied for the first dollar denominated bond issue in Nepal for a hydropower company, which he conceived and structured in order to encourage foreign direct investment in Nepal. Additionally, he is leading the management of the first ever International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) local bond issue.
A graduate in Business Administration and Development Studies, Siddhant has gained academic degrees from Virginia Tech (USA), The London School of Economics (UK) and University of Bristol (UK). He also serves as the Chairman of Credit Information Bureau, a semi autonomous body that is responsible for providing credit information to banks and financial institutions and black lists defaulters. One of the two members from the private sector in government’s high-level steering committee on public private partnership led by National Planning Commission, he has a thorough understanding of the private sector development in Nepal.
Siddhant is one of the two founder directors of WLC. He leads on Business Oxygen.