Surjit Rajpal is Executive Vice-President and Chief Risk Officer, BMO Financial Group. Mr. Rajpal was appointed to his current position in March 2011. From January to March 2011, he served as Deputy Head, Enterprise Risk and Portfolio Management.

Mr. Rajpal joined BMO Financial Group in 1982 and has since held a number of positions in Capital Markets, Relationship Management, Corporate Finance, Merchant Banking, Treasury, Credit Risk Management and Project Finance. In 1995, as Senior Vice President of Global Distribution in Chicago, he set up an integrated platform for BMO and Harris for Loan Syndication, Sales and Trading. Mr. Rajpal was also responsible for establishing the distressed trading and emerging market trading desks during his time in the United States.

In 2006, he was appointed Executive Managing Director and Global Head of Loan Products and Merchant Banking and was responsible for all aspects of the loan product business including origination, structuring, syndications, sales, trading and portfolio management. As Global Head of Loan Products, Mr. Rajpal had direct responsibility for Capital Markets risk from a first-line-of-defence perspective. He was also responsible for all merchant banking activities including third-party investments and a mezzanine/equity fund.

The early part of Mr. Rajpal’s career was spent in India and Hong Kong at Bank of America where he joined the World Banking Division directly from business school.

Mr. Rajpal obtained his MBA at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and his B.Eng in Mechanical Engineering from Osmania University.

(June 2011)

S. Rajpal (high-resolution picture, jpg, 1263k)