Rabobank Names New Executive Chairman

LONDON - The Dutch lender Rabobank said on Monday that its supervisory board had nominated Wiebe Draijer to serve as its new executive chairman after the bank’s former top executive resigned down because of a scandal involving the manipulation of global benchmark interest rates.

Piet Moerland, the chairman of Rabobank’s executive board, stepped down in October after Rabobank admitted to criminal wrongdoing by its employees and agreed to pay more than $1 billion in criminal and civil penalties for its role in setting the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, and other global interest rate benchmarks.

Rinus Minderhoud, a member of the bank’s supervisory board, has been serving as interim executive chairman since Mr. Moerland’s departure.

Mr. Draijer, 48, is a former consultant with McKinsey & Company and is currently president of the Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands, which advises the government on national and international social and economic policy.

“With Wiebe Draijer on board, we will have an all-round chairman of the executive board,” said Wout Dekker, the chairman of Rabobank’s supervisory board. “In view of his background and personality, we have found a perfect match. Rabobank will benefit from his industrial and strategic expertise and his societal leadership.”

Mr. Draijer’s appointment has been submitted to Dutch regulators for review.

Rabobank started out as an agriculture cooperative in the Netherlands in the late 19th century and has become the country’s biggest lender.

As part of the settlement with regulators in the United States, Britain and the Netherlands, Rabobank entered into a deferred prosecution agreement; it will avoid criminal charges as long as it continues to cooperate with investigators and stays out of further trouble.

Mr. Moerland stepped down in light of the findings of the investigations and said at the time that he understood and shared “the sense of indignation that the findings of the Libor and Euribor investigations will cause.”

“I wish to send a strong message on behalf of the bank and on behalf of the executive board: We sincerely apologize for, and strongly condemn, this inappropriate behavior,” he said at the time.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 24, 2014

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a former Rabobank executive chairman in one instance. He is Piet Moerland, not Moreland.