Ajax have suspended new CEO Alex Kroes with immediate effect on suspicion he has been involved in insider trading in the club’s shares, the club supervisory board said in a statement on Tuesday.
The board said it had learned Kroes had bought more than 17,000 Ajax shares a week before his intended appointment was announced on 2 August 2023. “External legal advice indicates that he likely engaged in insider trading,” the board said in the statement.
Kroes told Dutch news agency ANP he would seek a judgment by Dutch financial watchdog AFM, which oversees share trading, on his acquisitions.
Kroes said in a post on LinkedIn that he had purchased shares in “bits and pieces” from April 2022 to July 2023 before he agreed to join the club.
He said: “Last week, some media asked questions about the Ajax shares that I own. Among other things, I was asked whether I had received this as signing money from Ajax or whether I bought it myself. The latter is the case. I bought every Ajax share myself.
“At that time I had not yet agreed with Ajax, but – because of my own intentions – I had a good feeling about it. I thought it was a positive signal to radiate confidence in the club and to shareholders. To be part of that – literally and figuratively. I believe that you radiate confidence to your fellow shareholders and stakeholders if you buy shares yourself and therefore also run financial risks yourself. ‘Skin in the game’, as they say.”
Michael van Praag, chairman of the supervisory board, added: “We are deeply dismayed that this has occurred at Ajax, as it is highly detrimental to the club and everyone who holds it dear to them.
“Alex Kroes’s actions are not in line with what Ajax stands for. The timing of his share purchase indicates insider trading. Such a violation of the law cannot be tolerated by a publicly listed company, especially when it involves the CEO.
“After careful consideration, the Supervisory Board has therefore concluded that Alex’s position as a director of Ajax is untenable. I want to emphasise that the technical policy will continue with the individuals in place and on the path Ajax was already on with Alex.”
Kroes’s suspension is another twist in an already dramatic season for the Dutch record champions, in which they fired their technical director and head coach only a few months after appointing them and briefly found themselves at the bottom of the Eredivisie table for the first time.
Ajax are currently in fifth place, 28 points behind league leaders PSV Eindhoven, despite spending over €100m (£85.5m) on new players in the summer.
Kroes, 49, a former director at Eredivisie clubs Go Ahead Eagles and AZ Alkmaar, started his job as CEO and chairman of the board at Ajax on 15 March.
