ING announced today the appointment of Stan Beckers as CEO of ING Investment Management International, succeeding Gilbert Van Hassel who has decided to leave ING. The appointment of Beckers has been approved by the Dutch Central Bank and will become effective 1 July 2013.
Van Hassel joined ING in 2007 as CEO of ING Investment Management Europe. He assumed the position as CEO of ING’s global Investment Management businesses November 2009 and is a member of the Management Board Insurance EurAsia. Consistent with the governance for Insurance/Investment Management Europe as announced on 13 March 2013, Beckers will report to Lard Friese, member of the Management Board Insurance EurAsia (MBE) who will also assume the responsibility for Investment Management within the MBE.
Beckers (1952, Belgian) has more than 30 years of professional and leadership experience in global finance and asset management. Beckers started his career in 1979 as a professor of Finance at KU Leuven, Belgium, after completing a PhD in Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1982, Beckers was one of the original partners in Barra where he established and managed the international operations. Barra, a leading provider of investment decision support tools, was successfully listed on the Nasdaq through an IPO in 1991 and eventually acquired by MSCI Inc.
From 2000, Beckers was CIO at WestLB Asset Management and at Kedge Capital. In 2004, Beckers joined Barclays Global Investors (BGI) which was later acquired by BlackRock. He served as CEO and CIO of BGI’s Alpha Management Group, he was also CIO of BGI´s European Active Equity Group and lastly was Managing Director and co-Head of BlackRock Solutions EMEA. Over the past 15 years, Beckers also has been a member of the Investment Committee at several pension funds and of the supervisory board at KAS Bank and Robeco.
Jan Hommen, CEO of ING Group, said, “As we accelerate preparations for the base case of an IPO of our European Insurance and Investment Management company, I am pleased to welcome Stan Beckers to ING. He brings with him a wealth of experience to lead ING Investment Management for future global success. I also want to take this opportunity to thank Gilbert Van Hassel for his leadership and dedication in leading ING Investment Management through a period of economic challenges and organizational change. We wish him well in his future endeavours.”