EFG Eurobank Ergasias - ALBA (Athens Laboratory of Business Administration)

EFG Eurobank Ergasias, in cooperation with ALBA (Athens Laboratory of Business Administration), has launched a pioneering in-house postgraduate study program in Business Administration (in-house Master in Business Administration). The aim of the program is the acquisition of specialized, up-to-date knowledge in the development and disposal of products, services and technologies in the financial sector.
The «EFG Eurobank Ergasias – ALBA MBA in Financial Services» program leads to the award of the Master’s degree after two years of studies. This is the first in-house MBA organized in our country with a specialization in the financial services sector and, certainly, the first organized, provided and supported by a Greek bank for its personnel. It should be noted that the program will be available to all employees of the Banking Group. This initiative reflects EFG Eurobank Ergasias’s conviction that the attainment of high personal performance and the improvement of personnel’s knowledge and skills are the best methods in order that an ongoing and successful development of the Bank’s human resources can be achieved. The EFG Eurobank Ergasias CEO, Mr. Nikolaos Nanopoulos, underlining the importance given by the Bank to the ongoing training of its human resources, pointed out that “the best way to ensure effective monitoring and understanding of the significant developments taking place in the local and international financial sector is through the acquisition of more comprehensive and thorough knowledge within a creative work environment”.33 Bank executives and employees participate in the first course of the program that commenced today. The selection was made in accordance with stringent merit and academic criteria, regardless of rank or age. The first team comprises 22 women and 11 men whose average professional experience is 9.5 years. The program is supervised by a special Academic Committee. The members of the Committee are, from EFG Eurobank Ergasias, Mr. Nikos Karamouzis and Mr. Byron Ballis, Acting Managing Directors, and Ms. Theano Zambella, Human Resources Manager, from ALBA, Managing Director Mr. Nikos Embeoglou, and the Chancellor, Professor Nikos Travlos. The program is supervised by the EFG Eurobank Ergasias Section of Human Resources Selection and Development, headed by Ms. Anna Skarlatou. Teaching in the «EFG Eurobank Ergasias – ALBA MBA Program in Financial Services» is carried out by prominent university professors from INSEAD (the world-known Institute of Business Studies), from the University of New York and, of course, ALBA. As regards the development of this new program, the ALBA chancellor, professor N. Travlos, pointed out that it is “a pioneering initiative on the part of EFG Eurobank Ergasias, which shall contribute to the further development of its exceptional human resources”, and commenting on the selection of ALBA for the planning and implementation of the program he noted that “it constitutes a great honor and acknowledgment of the work that has been consistently carried out during ten consecutive years”.
As pointed out by Ms. Th. Zambella, Human Resources Manager, “the Bank’s ongoing training budget is particularly high. In 2002, it reached 2.8 million Euro (approximately GRD 1 billion)”. Thus, during the previous year, the Bank’s educational programs which have been certified according to ISO 9001 by the British Standards Institution, were developed during 203,483 hours of education in 756 programs with the participation of 7,500 employees, while a significant portion of this expenditure concerns the attendance of international educational seminars in order to ensure the ongoing monitoring of developments in international banking.