Saudi National Bank chairman Ammar Al Khudairy resigned days after his comments triggered a collapse in the shares of the Credit Suisse bank.
He will be replaced by SNB managing director and group CEO Saeed Mohammed Al-Ghamdi, while former deputy Talal Ahmed Al Khereiji will become SNB's new acting CEO. It was noted that Al Khudairy is resigning for personal reasons, but most likely, it is because of the lost investment in Credit Suisse.
At the end of last year, the SNB said it will no longer support the bank "for many reasons beyond the simplest, which is regulatory and legislative." This caused panic among investors, causing Credit Suisse shares to fall 24% in just one session, despite actually confirming SNB's previous position that it had no intention of expanding beyond its then 9.9% stake as Credit Suisse's largest shareholder. In the end, the second largest Swiss bank was acquired by UBS, making SNB lose about 80% of its investment in Credit Suisse.
Despite the loss, the Saudi National Bank says its broader strategy remains unchanged. "As of December 2022, SNB's investment in Credit Suisse represented less than 0.5% of SNB's total assets, and 1.7% of SNB's investment portfolio," they noted. "The change in the valuation of SNB's investment in Credit Suisse does not affect SNB's growth plans and forecasts for 2023," they added.
