ABN Amro picks former BNP Paribas banker Berard as CEO

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Dutch bank ABN Amro on Friday said it intended to appoint BNP Paribas's former retail boss Marguerite Berard as its new CEO, as the lender prepares for the government to sell down its stake further.

Berard, 47, BNP Paribas' former head of French commercial and personal banking, will be proposed as the next CEO at ABN Amro's general shareholders meeting in April. She will succeed Robert Swaak, who in August unexpectedly said he would resign three years before the end of his term.

A former civil servant and adviser to ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Berard spent five years at French bank BPCE before joining BNP, where she was tasked with improving the performance of the lender's retail division by cutting costs, to mixed results.

She left the bank abruptly last March, and was seen by some industry sources as a potential successor to BNP Paribas CEO Jean-Laurent Bonnafe.

ABN Amro, one of three dominant banks in the Netherlands, was nationalised during the 2008 financial crisis, and re-privatised in 2015.

The state held a majority of ABN Amro shares for years, but has been winding down its stake since early 2023.

The government in October said it intended to cut its holding from 40.5% to approximately 30% through a trading plan. It has not given an update on the sale since.

ABN Amro shares have risen around 15% over the past year, but at 15.35 euros still trade well below the 2015 introduction price of 17.75 euros.

(Reporting by Bart Meijer; Additional reporting by Mathieu Rosemain in Paris; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)