(Bloomberg) -- ABN Amro Bank NV has announced the departure of Chief Executive Officer Robert Swaak, just over three months after he got reappointed to lead the Dutch bank for a new term.
Swaak, who was brought on board to steer the bank in 2020, will step down in the first half of 2025. He was asked by the supervisory board to extend his term last year. The process of finding a successor has begun, the lender said in a statement on Thursday.
ABN Amro’s shares were trading 2.5% lower at €15.71 apiece at 10:33 a.m. in Amsterdam. The stock gained 19% this year ahead of today’s announcement.
“When I was asked for a second term as CEO last year, I took into account the possibility that I would make room for a successor at an appropriate time before the end of the term,” said Swaak, whose new term was supposed to end in 2028. He didn’t detail why he decided to leave earlier.
Swaak, who previously worked as consultant and auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, was tasked with steadying the Dutch lender and helping it transform after it was bailed out by the government during the financial crisis. He focused the bank on its core markets of Netherlands and northwestern Europe, pared down the investment banking operations and cut jobs to focus on digitization during his term.
“We began this journey of transforming the bank at a time of uncertainty,” Swaak said in an interview with Bloomberg at ABN Amro’s headquarters in Amsterdam in April. “We delivered what we wanted to deliver,” he said.
Under his helm, the bank agreed to pay €480 million in 2021 to settle a Dutch investigation on anti-money laundering. The settlement “marks the end of a painful and disappointing episode” for ABN Amro, he said at the time.
The 63-year-old Dutch banker has stepped up ABN Amro’s acquisition strategy over the past 12 months. ABN Amro expanded its presence in wealth management by entering an agreement to buy Germany’s Hauck & Aufhäuser Lampe Privatbank AG for €672 million from Fosun International Ltd.. The deal is poised to add €26 billion in assets under management for the Dutch lender. It also acquired online broker BUX BV last year to boost its retail investment and digital presence.
“Here we are with another management change at ABN Amro,” Jason Kalamboussis, an analyst at ING said in a note to clients. The bank is yet to appoint a permanent chief risk officer after Tanja Cuppen stepped down at the end of her term in April.
Still, Kalamboussis added that the wealth management acquisition in Germany showed that ABN Amro is “turning the page” and starting to share a clear strategic direction.
The Dutch government is the largest holder in ABN Amro after a €22 billion bailout. It was listed again in 2015 after the government sold a 23% stake in the initial public offering.
Swaak had worked at rebuilding ABN Amro into a lender focused on retail and corporate banking, reducing its exposure to riskier businesses, and the European markets. In August 2020, ABN Amro said the bank will stop providing corporate finance outside Europe and would pull out of trade and commodity financing. It also cut jobs in New York last year as it worked toward withdrawing from countries outside northwest Europe.
The state has been gradually selling down its stake in the bank. It has announced plans to lower its stake to about 40%.
(Updates with details throughout)
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