New Danske Bank CEO Does Away With Thousands of Job Titles

(Bloomberg) --

Danske Bank A/S is getting rid of thousands of job titles as the lender tries to create a more transparent organization.

The Copenhagen-based bank, where ABN Amro veteran Chris Vogelzang took over as chief executive officer in June, is slashing the number of job titles to around 400 from roughly 3,600, according to Finansforbundet, the finance industry’s labor union. It cited Lisbeth Sorensen, a senior human resources consultant at Danske.

Among the 400 titles will be some new ones, including a number focusing on anti-money laundering work. Danske is the target of criminal investigations in the U.S. and across Europe after admitting it handled as much as $230 billion in potentially suspicious transactions. The bank’s former CEO, Thomas Borgen, is among a number of executives no longer with the bank to have had preliminary criminal charges brought against them.

In response to the laundering scandal, Danske is pulling out of the Baltic region and Russia, and focusing on its Nordic operations. The bank’s shares have slumped about 30% this year, after losing almost 50% in 2018.

Danske is implementing a new human resources system that targets greater transparency, Finansforbundet quoted Sorensen as saying. The idea is to create more clarity about who does what at the bank, with the new model set to make it easier for employees to switch roles.

“In recent years, more and more job titles have appeared,” and new titles were created if old ones seemed an imperfect fit, Sorensen said. In the new system, titles will all be given in English, rather than Danish, to create transparency across the bank’s Nordic units, though staff will have the option to keep their local language job titles.

The project, which doesn’t include executive management, started last year and will continue into 2020, according to the bank.

To contact the reporter on this story: Frances Schwartzkopff in Copenhagen at fschwartzko1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tasneem Hanfi Brögger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net

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