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The chair of Saudi National Bank resigned.

 

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The chair of Saudi National Bank, Ammar Alkhudairy, resigned cit­ing per­sonal reas­ons after the king­dom’s largest lender was thrust into the lime­light amid tur­moil at Credit Suisse.

The chief exec­ut­ive, Saeed Al Ghamdi, will replace Alkhudairy as chair, the bank said yes­ter­day. As a result, Talal Al-Khereiji becomes act­ing chief exec­ut­ive.

In a tele­vi­sion inter­view this month, Alkhudairy said that SNB, which bought a 9.9 per cent stake in Credit Suisse last year, would not provide any more fin­an­cial assist­ance. Alkhudairy’s com­ments reflec­ted estab­lished policy at the bank but sent Credit Suisse’s share price into a tailspin, set­ting in frantic train nego­ti­ations that cul­min­ated in a hasty mer­ger with Swiss rival UBS. «The issue of the chair­man’s state­ment did not go unnoticed among the senior decision-makers,» said one Saudi Ara­bia-based banker.

Regional exec­ut­ives said he had drawn undue atten­tion to SNB and the king­dom’s broader eco­nomic agenda. «There was no good out­come».

Alkhudairy is an exper­i­enced banker who used to chair the Saudi Ara­bian out­posts of Gold­man Sachs and Mor­gan Stan­ley. SNB, formed by the mer­ger in 2021 of the Samba Fin­an­cial Group and National Com­mer­cial Bank, has a share of about 30 per cent of the coun­try’s bank­ing mar­ket.

The UBS takeover of Credit Suisse res­ul­ted in about $1bn of losses for SNB, but one per­son with know­ledge of the details said the stake in the Swiss bank accoun­ted for less than 2 per cent of its invest­ment port­fo­lio and would have a neg­li­gible impact on prof­it­ab­il­ity.

www.sba.tax

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  1. Adam28 March 2023 at 13:30

    I wonder why he mentioned on live tv that their bank would not provide any more financial assistance to Credit Suisse? Was this a mistake on his part?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oliver Randall28 March 2023 at 13:58

    Since someone said that the stake in the Swiss bank accounted for less than 2% of the investment portfolio, this shouldn't have been a reason to lose faith in the chair, no? I think there are other reasons behind this move.

    ReplyDelete

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