ABN Amro chief executive Kees van Dijhuizen is stepping down in April next year after two years in the job.

Van Dijkhuizen replaced former finance minister Gerrit Zalm in 2017 after serving four years as chief financial officer, following a career in the civil service and then the private sector.

‘I’m fully committed to further accelerating the bank’s strategy… together with our employees and clients in the months ahead, after which I will be able to pass on the torch in full confidence,’ Van Dijkhuizen, 63, said in a statement.

The bank, which is still partly in Dutch state hands, is now beginning the process of finding a successor ‘in a timely and orderly manner’, the statement said.

A year ago, the Financieele Dagblad reported that senior managers at ABN Amro had taken the ‘unprecedented step‘ of warning  Dutch banking sector watchdogs DNB (the central bank) and AF, about a crisis of confidence at the top.

The concerns of the managers centred around former supervisory board chairman Olga Zoutendijk, who has since resigned, but they also claimed Dijkhuizen was ‘practically invisible’.