ING nominates ex-PM Balkenende to board in exec shakeup

ING Bank will be nominating former Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende to sit on the bank's supervisory board. The nomination will be made at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) on May 8th. Along with Balkenende, the bank will also nominate Margarete Haase and Hans Wijers for positions on the board, ING announced on Thursday.

Balkenende is currently Professor of Governance, Institutions and Internationalization at Erasmus University Rotterdam and an external advisor at EY. The CDA man was Prime Minister between 2002 and 2010, before Rutte took office. If everyone at the AGM agrees, Balkenende will start working on the bank's supervisory board immediately after the end of the meeting. According to Financieele Dagblad, this is the second time ING is hiring a former Prime Minister to the supervisory board. Wim Kok sat on the board between 2003 and 2009.

Balkenende and his Finance Minister Wouter Bos arranged 10 billion euros of state aid for ING in 2008, to prevent the bank collapsing in the credit crisis. ING paid back the last of that money in 2014.

ING wants Hans Wijers to succeed Jeroen van der Veer as chairman of the supervisory board when Van der Veer departs next year. But the bank wants him Wijers to start working as of September 1st this year, to give him chance to learn from Van der Veer and thereby to ensure that the transfer of responsibilities go as smoothly as possible.

Wijers was a member of the executive board and CEO of AkzoNobel between 2002 and 2012. Before that he was the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs between 1999 and 2002. He also serves on the supervisory boards of Heineken, Royal Dutch Shell and HAL Investments.

ING is also nominating Austrian Margarete Haase for a position on the supervisory board, though when she will be appointed will only be announced at a later date. She currently serves on the supervisory boards of Fraport AG and ZF Friedrichshafen AG and of the German Corporate Governance Kodex committee.