Hamers to Replace Hommen as ING's Chief Executive
February 25, 2013 by David Pilla
AMSTERDAM – Jan Hommen will step down as chief executive of ING Group NV on Oct. 1, 2013, and will be succeeded Ralph Hamers, who is currently CEO of ING Belgium.
Hommen’s current four-year term on the executive board will expire after the annual general meeting on May 13, ING said. The supervisory board will propose at the annual meeting to reappoint him until Oct. 1 to ensure a smooth leadership transition. Hamers will be nominated as a member of the executive board at the meeting.
Hommen has been a member of the supervisory board since 2005 and its chairman since 2008. In 2009, he became CEO of ING Group and chairman of the executive board.
ING, which had undertaken a restructuring project since it was bailed out by the Dutch government in 2008, reported a 20.9% rise in fourth-quarter net profit as a strong turnaround in the insurance segment overcame a 72.3% fall in underlying profit for the banking segment (Best’s News Service, Feb. 13, 2013). An initial public offering of the U.S. insurance segment is planned for 2013, with the timing contingent on market conditions. Hommen said the group is also preparing a “base case” IPO for its European insurance operations.
Following his appointment to the executive board, Hamers will also become a member of the Management Board Banking and Management Board Insurance EurAsia, and as of Oct. 1, he will succeed Hommen as CEO of both the MBB and MBE. Decisions regarding the composition of the board of directors of ING US are pending in light of that unit’s planned IPO.
Hamers has experience in both retail and commercial banking. He has been CEO of ING Belgium and Luxemburg since March 2011. There, he played a pivotal role in driving the strategic “universal direct model” to expand online sales channels and modernize the branches, said ING.
He joined ING in 1991 as a relationship manager for structured finance in the global clients division. In 1997, he moved to global risk management and he became general manager of ING Romania in 1999.
In 2005, he was appointed CEO of ING Bank in the Netherlands before becoming global head of the commercial banking network in 2007. In 2010, he was appointed head of network management for retail banking direct and international. In that year, he also became member of the ING banking management team that governs corporate development and strategic activities.
(By David Pilla, international editor, BestWeek: David.Pilla@ambest.com
