CEO of Wallenbergs’ Bank to step down

Dubai

Annika Falkengren, the chief executive officer of SEB AB, will leave the Swedish bank after running it for 11 years.
SEB, which was founded by Sweden’s Wallenberg family in 1856 to become Stockholm’s first private bank, will now start looking for a replacement for Falkengren, the board said in a statement on Monday. The 54-year-old, who will step down as CEO by July, will join Swiss wealth and asset manager Lombard Odier Group as managing partner, according to the statement.
Andreas Hakansson, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas, said the bank is likely to go for an internal candidate to replace Falkengren, given its strong management team. “SEB has one of the best benches,” he said by phone. “There are a lot of good people around here, which will make the transition easier.”
Shares in the bank fell as much as 2.1 percent after the market opened in Stockholm on Monday, slightly more than the Bloomberg Index of European financial firms, which declined 1.6 percent.
“I have spent my entire professional life in SEB,” Falkengren said in a statement on Monday. “It was not easy to take a decision to pursue a new career and role. However, I have come to the conclusion that now is the right moment.”
Falkengren has worked at SEB, Sweden’s biggest currency trading bank, for three decades and was one of the few women to reach the absolute top of Sweden’s corporate elite. She successfully steered SEB through the 2008-2009 crisis in the Baltic region, booking smaller losses than rival Swedbank AB. In 2012, she was voted European banker of the year by the Frankfurt-based Group of 20 + 1, an association of financial journalists.
The outgoing CEO has experienced the bank from inside a branch office to its trading floor before scaling the ladder of upper management. She became global head of fixed income in 1995, global head of trading in 1997 and head of the merchant banking unit in 2000.

As CEO, Falkengren has had to navigate an economic climate which for the past few years has been dominated by negative rates. That’s increasingly driven Scandinavian banks to expand into areas like wealth management and advisory services, after traditional lending income came under pressure.

Falkengren “successfully navigated SEB through the global financial crisis and set a clear strategy forward on which she and the whole SEB team relentlessly has delivered,” board Chairman Marcus Wallenberg said in the statement. “She leaves a strong and stable bank with a robust financial position and a growing customer base.”