Alex Kroes already knew that he would become general manager of Ajax when he bought another 17,000 shares of the club from Amsterdam on July 26. © ANP
Hielke Biemond
Yesterday at 09:34
Amsterdam
Alex Kroes, the general manager who had to ensure administrative peace at Ajax after an insane year, bought a package of 42,500 shares for his appointment. He wanted to ‘send a positive signal’ to the fallen top club and the shareholders.
Kroes was not interested in quick gain, he emphasized after the decision of the supervisory board to throw him out again within a month. On the contrary: with this transaction he showed himself prepared to ‘take a financial risk himself’.
The fact that he paid more than €400,000 from his own pocket for this self-proclaimed gesture – based on the current stock price of 10.30 euros per share – says a lot about Alex Kroes. He clearly didn’t have to do it at Ajax for the money. This also became clear when he carelessly transferred ‘a symbolic amount’ of 50,000 euros to his previous employer AZ to get rid of the nagging.
Also read: Ajax suspends Alex Kroes: new CEO may have traded with insider information
Five years ago, he used the capital that Kroes amassed as a celebrated player’s agent to buy the majority of the shares of Go Ahead Eagles. No one in Deventer thought it was a problem that he immediately became co-director there to make the package more valuable. Certainly not when the combination of Kroes’ money and leadership qualities turned out to herald a period of prosperity.
At the Netherlands’ only listed football club, such a combination of hats is a lot more sensitive. Especially since Ajax fired technical director Sven Mislintat earlier this season on suspicion of a conflict of interest. It turned out that he himself had shares in the manager’s office of one of his numerous bad purchases.
Also read: Alex Kroes was also in violation at AZ: he was not allowed to be a shareholder of Ajax at all
The supervisory board now accuses Kroes of insider trading, especially because he bought an additional 17,000 shares a week before his appointment. The fact that he did this in all openness, as his defense states, does not make it any less punishable.
As someone who knows the football world inside and out, Kroes should have known better. After very successful years, he succumbed to his own overconfidence. In that respect he was a great fit for Ajax.
