Ajax CEO Alex Kroes says the club’s board is pushing him out with no justification
Ajax CEO and executive board director Alex Kroes said he feels that his suspension by Ajax for insider trading is a case of the club's supervisory board members trying to push him out. Ajax announced on Tuesday that Kroes was suspended with immediate effect for purchasing 17,000 shares of the club, which is publicly traded, a week before the announcement that he was set to become their new CEO.
Using information that has not been disclosed to the public to make decisions about stock trades is classified as "insider dealing," and is prohibited by Article 14 of the European Market Abuse Regulation, according to Dutch financial markets regulator AFM. "In addition, it is prohibited to recommend that another person engage in insider dealing or induce another person to engage in insider dealing. Finally, it is prohibited to unlawfully disclose inside information."
But Kroes said that he had not done anything wrong. He will challenge Ajax’s decision and approach the AFM himself. In a short statement that was more in-depth than his initial remarks on LinkedIn, Kroes told Telegraaf journalist Mike Verweij that the Supervisory Board wanted him out because of conflicts over how to manage the club.
“Kroes sees this all as a political game. He thinks the [supervisory board] has deliberately pushed him out. Possibly because they disagreed with his reforms,” Verweij said on the Kick Off podcast.
Ajax said it is convinced that Kroes knew he would be the new Ajax general manager when he bought the shares. “Five or six lawyers have looked through all his emails and messages,” Chairman Michael van Praag told Ajax fans at a scheduled meeting, ANP reported. “They saw strong evidence that Kroes acted with insider knowledge, which is punishable. Lawyers will never play judge. They won’t say: he has to go. But they cannot be any clearer than this.”
Van Praag explained that the club had no other choice but to part ways with Kroes. “How can I explain to our stakeholders that we have a director who is doing things that are punishable by law? And how can I explain to our staff that we are continuing to work with Kroes while we fired Marc Overmars for sexual harassment?”
Van Praag acknowledged that there is some tension between Kroes and the supervisory board. For example, Van Praag knows that Kroes thinks the supervisory board failed in its supervision of Sven Mislintat, the dismissed technical being investigated for dodgy transfer practices involving 100 million euros last summer. But Kroes’s suspension is not an act of retaliation, Van Praag said. “We looked into the options for keeping him. In the end, we made a unanimous decision to part ways.”
One of the club's most important pending decisions is a decision on whether to stick with men's interim manager John van 't Schip, or to go in a different direction. Earlier, a list of names of possible candidates leaked out, including Frank de Boer, Ajax staffer Dave Vos, and Mitchell van der Gaag, the current assistant to former Ajax manager Erik ten Hag at Manchester United. Other names on the list also drew a reaction, like Pascal Jansen, Pepijn Lijnders, Albert Stuijvenberg, Dick Schreuder and Joseph Oosting.
Two weeks ago, Kroes also ruffled feathers, by saying that it was unrealistic to think that Ajax will be in the running for the Eredivisie championship next year. The men's team is currently in fifth place on the table, 28 points behind PSV after 27 matches. Ajax has a record of 12 wins, 8 draws, and 7 losses for 44 points.
Last season's third-place finish was the team's worst in 14 years. A fifth-place finish would be the worst result since the 1999-2000 season.
At the end of the day, even if the Supervisory Board was confident in Kroes and his ability to turn things around, Ajax may not have been able to give him the space he needed when the information about the stock trade surfaced. The men's team is still reeling from the appearance of impropriety and a possible conflict of interest related to football transfers handled by former technical director Sven Mislintat.
Additionally, the Amsterdam football club is still on a back foot from Mislintat's predecessor, Marc Overmars, who was alleged to have created a hostile work environment with a pattern of behavior marked by accusations of sexual harassment and pressuring women affiliated with the club to spend time with him.
Should Kroes challenge the move to fire him, Verweij speculated on what this could mean for the two sides. “Even if Kroes wins the case, I wonder if there is a future for him at Ajax. I think it is over for him. Ajax needs to look for a specialist to clean up a mess.”
