Nordea CFO Leaves Under Backdrop Of Management Overhaul

Nordea Bank ABP’s finance chief is leaving amid a broader shakeup of the bank’s management under its new chief executive.

The lender said Christopher Rees, the group chief financial officer and head of group finance and treasury, is departing next year and intends to move to the U.K., The Wall Street Journal reported.

Rees has served as CFO since last year and came to Nordea in 2015. He previously served as head of markets, chief operating officer and deputy head of wholesale banking. The bank has reportedly started looking for a successor.

Frank Vang-Jensen will be Nordea’s new chief executive. Svenska Handelsbanken AB Analyst Maths Liljedahl said Vang-Jensen “is a man of action.”

“He wants to bring in his own team,” Liljedahl explained.

Nordea said last week that the bank’s deputy CEO and group chief operating officer, Torsten Hagen, as well as its head of human resources, Karen Tobiasen, would also be departing the bank. In recent years, the bank has been the recipient of much notice when it comes to its anti-money laundering controls, much like “the scrutiny faced by several of its peers,” WSJ noted.

In separate news, the head of the Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) in Finland warned that Nordic banks involved in money laundering scandals should be measured in their response and not withdraw from the area per reports in March. Anneli Tuominen, director general of the FSA in Helsinki, said at the time, “This money laundering discussion is very close to panic, and that is very dangerous.”

“It would be the worst possible end result of this discussion if banks would suddenly start to withdraw money from certain markets,” Tuominen said at the time. If there’s a lesson, she continued, it’s to “learn and do better,” not to leave.