Ammar Al Khudairy, the chairman of Saudi National Bank
1180,
has resigned and will be replaced by the bank’s chief executive officer, Saeed Mohammed Al Ghamdi, the lender said in a statement on Monday.
The Saudi National Bank said that Al Khudairy’s resignation was due to “personal reasons.”
His comments about Credit Suisse
CS,
CSGN,
were seemingly the last straw before a share price freefall that saw the bank agree to get bought out by UBS
UBS,
with Swiss government assistance.
He had gone on Bloomberg TV and was asked if it would increase its stake. “The answer is absolutely not, for many reasons outside the simplest reason, which is regulatory and statutory,” he said.
Investors panicked, sending Credit Suisse shares down 24%, even though his comments were fairly consistent with what the bank had said in October. At that time, it said it had no current plans to go beyond a 9.9% shareholding, though it did say “any future investment would be appraised individually at the time by carefully considering the merits of such investment based on financial impact, capital treatment and long-term shareholder value creation.”
The bank paid $1.5 billion in October for that stake, which is now worth $330 million.
— Steve Goldstein contributed to this report
