An excerpt from the Business Today Magazine:

Considering his contribution to NBO and to the Sultanate, he surely deserves the number one position this year too. Voted consistently as the best CEO for the past two years, Aubyn Hill is responsible for bringing in the much-needed professionalism into the banking sector. According to a financial sector bigwig, Hill's greatest asset is clarity of thought. His colleague, Abdulaziz al Balushi feels Hill leads by example, is an equal opportunity employer and seeks constant improvement of his people's skills and helps them achieve it.

In Hill's own words: "Aubyn the CEO, is totally focused on learning and creating a learning organization to ensure that every individual who joins NBO becomes better in terms of knowledge and performance at the end of every business day."

He furthur says that, "I believe the true character of any individual or organization emerges during difficult times - when the going is good, many real issues get submerged under the good news. We are an institution that believes in playing straight up, whether it comes to getting business, giving information or tackling issues head on."

Also, the tough stand taken by Central Bank of Oman (CBO) in 2001 on the provisioning front had left most of the banks searching for alternative ways of doing business. To this, Hill comments, "The banks had to find a way to grow in an economy that had been slow. The corporate loan performance was affected by the economy. We had to work in this scenario with an obligation to build 65 percent of our loan asset base from the corporate segment. The pie was becoming smaller, while the market was becoming more competitive. There were no dramatic improvements in the economy as the year went by and due to a combination of factors, provisioning became a big issue for most Omani banks - and we are no exception. The past year was quite a difficult one for NBO."