Ian Narev: Commonwealth Bank CEO

Ian Narev’s parents both survived the Holocaust. They left post-war Europe to start a new life in New Zealand were they met and got married. They shortened the family name from Narewczewitz to Narev.

Ian was actually a child star at the age of 12 appearing in “Children of Fire Mountain”, the 1979 television series in his native New Zealand.  Instead of focusing on acting he change priorities and did very well in his academics. He graduated from the University of Auckland with a degree in English and law. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.

Ian did his masters degree in international corporate law in 1994 at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. He was the top student of his year. Ian earned a Masters of Laws in International Relations in 1998 from the New York University where he was a Hauser Scholar.  

He worked as a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisition then later joined consulting firm McKinsey & Co. as a consultant in the financial institutions practice of the firm, working in strategy and organizational change engagements for four of the 10 largest financial institutions in the U.S.  Ian worked in McKinsey’s New York, Sydney, and Auckland offices between 1998 and 2007. He became a global partner in 2003, and from 2005 until he left in 2007 was head of the New Zealand office of McKinsey.

Ian joined Commonwealth Bank, one of the largest banks in Australia and the world in 2007. He was Group Head of Strategy and was responsible for corporate strategy development, mergers and acquisitions and major cross-business strategic initiatives. He led the Group’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Bankwest in 2008 and the Group’s investment in Aussie Home Loans.

Then on January 2009 until September 2011 Ian was Group Executive, Business and Private Banking, which is one of the Group’s six operating divisions. It has about 200,000 business customers, 1 million trading customers, and employs over 4,000 people.

For his outstanding work Ian became the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Commonwealth Bank on December 2011.