Sri Lanka’s newest investment bank, Acuity Partners (Pvt) Limited, a joint venture between the DFCC Bank and HNB, is now ready for what it last week called "operational take-off" as a full service investment bank.

The investment bank said that the corporate finance teams of HNB and the DFCC Bank, both of which are controlled/influenced by entities related to Mr. Harry Jayawardena, will be assigned to Acuity with oversight provided by Mr. Tyrone de Silva, a non executive director of the Acuity board who is a Senior Vice President of DFCC.

Mr. Ray Abeywardena, CEO/Director of DFCC Stockbrokers (Pvt) Limited will be CEO/Director of Acuity with effect from February 1 with Mr. Deva Ellapola, currently heading HNB’s stocking broking business, leading Acuity’s stockbroking operations also from February 1.

A news release jointly issued by DFCC’s CEO Nihal Fonseka who is Chairman of Acuity Partners and HNB MD Rajendra Theagarajah who is a member of Acuity board said that Abeywardena will assume overall responsibility for the Acuity group which includes its corporate finance, stockbroking and primary dealer businesses.

Mr. Amal Fernando will be acting as head of fixed income operations for Acuity from January 15, the news release said.

Acuity is a business with a start-up capital of Rs.500 million floated some months ago.

Its present MD, Mr. Jayantha Perera will relinquish his current position, remaining a non executive director on the Acuity board and reverting to his substantive position as a Senior Deputy General Manager of HNB.

"These moves will ensure that Acuity group will have full time senior executives to be in charge of key functions as it brings its operating units together in a new location at Dharmapala Mawatha, Colombo 7 by the end of January 2009, while continuing to benefit from oversight exercised by specialist non-executive directors," the news release said.