Karl Guha, where should we know it from?
The board of the largest bank in the Netherlands will have a new strong strategic discussion partner. If the shareholders agree at the end of April, Karl Guha will become the new chairman of the Supervisory Board – the green light from the European Central Bank has already been obtained. Karl Guha (1964, Darjeeling, India) is not (yet) very active outside the banking known name. But in the banking world it is: between 2012 and the end of last year, the Dutch-Indian Guha was CEO of Van Lanschot Kempen, one of the minor players in the Dutch banking landscape. He was recently appointed advisor to the Dutch branch of Goldman Sachs.
Why did ING come to him?
In the press release, outgoing chairman of the supervisory board Hans Wijers praises Guha’s “long and distinguished career in the financial world, which encompasses various phases and multiple aspects”. Wijers will refer to the various banks that Guha served during his career as a banker, which he started in 1989 at ABN Amro. He eventually made it to that group treasurer, or ‘treasurer’ of the bank. Financial director Tanate Phutrakul of ING will therefore not be able to send Guha into the woods with complicated figures: the bank balance sheet holds no secrets for him.
Guha then worked outside the Netherlands: between 2009 and 2012 he was risk director of the Italian bank Unicredit. This international experience – he speaks fluent English – will help him control the management of ING. After all, the bank’s 58,000 employees do not only work in the Netherlands: the bank is active in forty countries, serving 38 million customers.
As chairman of the board, he successfully transformed Van Lanschot Kempen from an ailing bank that tried to do everything into a successful asset manager focusing on one branch of banking. According to a former colleague, Guha has proven to be strategically strong at Van Lanschot. He knows what he wants to do and executes it. His new role is not executive: that is up to chairman of the board Steven van Rijswijk and his team. It will therefore be interesting how a supervisory role suits the sometimes directive Guha.
Oh wait, wasn’t there something about Guha’s salary?
Yes, that is remarkable. The bank that ended up in a very serious riot in 2018 about the remuneration of former CEO Ralph Hamers, opts for a chairman of the supervisory board who is also well acquainted with salary riots. When he took office in 2012, there was already a stir among shareholders about his ‘starting salary’ and in 2018 politics even got involved when his salary was increased. Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra (CDA) said at the time that the 20 percent increase in the form of extra shares “does not contribute to restoring confidence in the financial sector”.
In terms of remuneration, Guha is therefore a true Anglo-Saxon banker – he studied economics at Boston University. He thinks it is healthy for staff to be co-shareholders of a bank, so that they share in its benefits and burdens. Should a discussion erupt again about the remuneration of ING employees, there is a good chance that Guha will also defend that point of view.
In the absence of columnist Marike Stellinga, who is on writing leave, NRC chooses a person of the week every Saturday.