Soccer- Ajax Amsterdam suspend CEO amid share trading suspicions

AFC Ajax NV

02/04/2024 08:46

AMSTERDAM, April 2 (Reuters) - Ajax Amsterdam  AJAX.AS 
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 Aug. 2, 2023.
    "External legal advice indicates that he likely engaged in
insider trading," the board said in the statement.
    Kroes could not immediately be reached for comment. He told
Dutch news agency ANP he would seek a judgment by Dutch
financial watchdog AFM, which oversees share trading, on his
acquisitions.
    Kroes' suspension is another twist in an already dramatic
season for the Dutch record champion, 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 ever.
    Ajax are currently in fifth place, 28 points behind league
leaders PSV Eindhoven, despite spending over 100 million euros 
($107 million) on new players in the close-season.
    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 March 15.($1 = 0.9324 euros)

 (Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Nick Macfie)
 ((Bart.Meijer@thomsonreuters.com;))