DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (AP) – The chairman of Saudi National Bank has resigned for “personal reasons,” a regulatory filing said yesterday, just after his comments on Credit Suisse sent that firm’s stock cratering and ultimately saw rival UBS to acquire the firm.
The resignation of Ammar al-Khudairy at Saudi National Bank, the largest commercial bank in the oil-rich kingdom, comes just months after the lender invested an additional USD1.5 billion in Credit Suisse to take its holding in the Swiss bank to nearly 10 per cent of its value.
While al-Khudairy sought to clarify his remarks after making them on March 15, they caused Credit Suisse shares to drop by around a third of their value at the time and fuelled its ultimate collapse. The incident further spooked international markets already reeling from other bank collapses and high inflation brought on in part by the war in Ukraine.
The filing on Riyadh’s Tadawul stock exchange said al-Khudairy would be replaced by Saeed al-Ghamdi, the bank’s chief executive. It did not elaborate on al-Khudairy’s departure, only saying it came “due to personal reasons.” Al-Khudairy could not be immediately reached for comment and Saudi National Bank did not respond to a request for comment.
Saudi National Bank stock traded over USD12 a share yesterday. They had been as high as nearly USD22 a share over the last year.
Shares of Credit Suisse sank over 30 per cent after al-Khudairy told Bloomberg on March 15 that its biggest shareholder – the Saudi National Bank – would not provide more money to the Swiss lender.
“The answer is absolutely not, for many reasons outside the simplest reason, which is regulatory and statutory,” al-Khudairy said at the time.
