Margin Call: Where are the members of CBA’s former management team now?

Then Commonwealth Bank CEO Ian Narev arrives with then CFO Rob Jesudason to present the bank’s full-year result in 2017 as Matt Comyn looks on. Picture: James Croucher

It’s been a humbling few days for Ian Narev’s once celebrated executive team. So where are they now?

Of the Narev-led 13-strong “senior management team” that featured in the bank’s pre-royal commission 2017 annual report (and were all together paid almost $30 million), only five still have jobs at the bank, including the straight talking 42-year-old Matt Comyn, who gave a bracingly frank assessment of their inadequacies in his two day appearance before Kenneth Hayne.

Three have set off overseas, well away from the reputational damage of the Hayne Show.

Flash-in-the-pan former CFO Rob Jesudason returned to the banker’s paradise of Hong Kong to run blockchain developer Block.one (where his bonuses will no longer be threatened by CBA’s very much awake chair Catherine Livingstone).

Former CBA CEO Ian Narev with former CFO Rob Jesudason. Picture: Getty Images

Closer to home, CBA’s former NZ boss Barbara Chapman, is pursuing her corporate life after the bank over the ditch where she’s picked up non-exec directorships at IAG New Zealand, Fletcher Building and Genesis Energy (which she chairs).

Over in Singapore, former tech boss David Whiteing, who left during Comyn’s sweeping March exec reshuffle, is now working as the group COO of Standard Chartered Bank.

But corporate rebirth has proved trickier for those former CBA execs still based in Australia.

After his royal commission appearance, it’s unlikely any will be asking Comyn to be a referee as they work the job market.

Former CBA CFO David Craig shrewdly retired in June last year before things got really ugly. Thankfully, Craig picked up a spot on the Lendlease board before he left.

Former wealth boss Annabel Spring — despite once having, we were told, visions of taking over from Craig Meller at AMP — is still to start a new executive gig.

CBA’s former institutional boss Kelly Bayer Rosmarin and human resources chief Melanie Laing both left in Comyn’s March reorganisation.

Bayer Rosmarin is filling days as an unpaid member of the Football Federation of Australia, now chaired by Chris Nikou.

Laing has chosen self-employment, setting up her own “C-suite HR advisory and consulting” outfit MS Laing Pty Ltd.

Then there’s their former leader Narev, he of the formidable profit making record and once the most lauded man in Australian banking.

Still only 51, Narev is yet to take on a new corporate gig — although, thanks to Geoffrey Rush, his role chairing the Sydney Theatre Company has helped pass the time.