VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian lender Raiffeisen Bank International (>> Raiffeisen Bank International AG) named veteran banker Karl Sevelda on Friday to succeed Herbert Stepic as chief executive of central and eastern Europe's second-biggest lender.

Sevelda, 63, has been deputy CEO since 2010 and head of corporate banking and will take on the top job with immediate effect, it said after a supervisory board meeting to fill the leadership vacuum caused by Stepic's resignation last month.

"Karl Sevelda will retain responsibility for corporate banking until a new division of functional responsibilities is determined by the supervisory board," it said. Chief Risk Officer Johann Strobl was appointed the new deputy CEO.

Sevelda has until now lived in the shadow of the larger-than-life Stepic.

Serious and bespectacled, he has had little to do with investors, preferring to confine himself to the corporate clients for whose business he was responsible.

"He is a relationship person," said one former close colleague who asked not to be named. "He is socially very intelligent. He's extremely charming."

Sevelda, an economics and social science graduate of Vienna University, joined Raiffeisen Group in 1998.

He did research for Austria's science and trade ministries while preparing for his doctorate before starting work in the export finance department of Creditanstalt, now UniCredit (>> UniCredit SpA), where he rose through the ranks.

"As a former department manager at Creditanstalt, he has the necessary tools for the job," Erste Bank central and eastern Europe banking analyst Guenter Hohberger has said.

Sevelda broke his service at Creditanstalt for three years, returning briefly to the trade ministry and doing short stints at banks in Britain and the United States before joining group parent Raiffeisen Zentralbank (RZB) in 1998 as board member responsible for corporate customers.

Stepic, 66, has denied wrongdoing in using front companies in the Caribbean and Asia to buy three apartments in Singapore and said he decided to quit to spare the bank a damaging debate about his personal investments.

His departure may trigger structural changes or asset sales at RBI, which is 78 percent owned by RZB, controlled by eight provincial Raiffeisen landesbanks which are in turn owned by hundreds of local cooperative banks.

(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Georgina Prodhan)

Stocks treated in this article : Raiffeisen Bank International AG, UniCredit SpA