Denmark's Danske Bank said today it had appointed its chairman of the board, Eivind Kolding, to be its new chief executive and succeed retiring Peter Straarup in mid-February.
Kolding, 52, is chief executive of container shipping company Maersk Line, part of the AP Moller-Maersk group which is Danske Bank's biggest shareholder. He will take over as chief executive on February 15, Danske Bank, Denmark's biggest banking group, said.
Danske Bank had announced in connection with its third-quarter results in November that it would seek a replacement for Straarup. Ole Andersen will replace Kolding as Danske Bank's chairman of the board, it said in the statement.
"Eivind Kolding has obvious qualifications that make him very well suited for the job, and he has achieved impressive results during his career," Andersen said in the statement.
Kolding joined the Danske Bank board of directors in 2001 and became chairman in March this year. He has a law degree from Copenhagen University and started his career at the AP Moller-Maersk group in 1989 as a lawyer. He has been the chief executive of Maersk Line since 2006.
Retiring Straarup, aged 60, who has led Danske Bank since 1998, has been widely seen as one of the most powerful men in Denmark.
But towards the end of his tenure, Straarup came under criticism for expanding to Ireland and Northern Ireland in 2005 which, with the onset of the financial crisis, left the group exposed to heavy writeoffs of loans made during the Irish property boom.
