Aarnout Loudon

Aarnout Loudon — latest news, discussion & facts — IJR

Akzo

Loudon started his career in 1964 at Mees & Hope bank. He wanted to switch to a larger bank after a while, but he told that banks would not hire each other's personnel at the time. In February 1969, he switched to the finance department of Royal Salt-Organon (KZO), which merged into the chemical conglomerate Akzo that same year. He later was finance director for Astral, Akzo's coatings business in France, and he became president of Akzo Brazil in 1975. Loudon was vice chair of Akzo's board of directors starting in May 1978.

He became chairman in May 1982, when the company had 80,000 employees and was among the largest industrial companies of the Netherlands. During his tenure, Akzo grew into a major player in the international chemical sector, and its profit reached ƒ954 million in 1989, up from ƒ165 million when the took over. The company spent several billion guilders on acquisitions, and it sold off other parts including its consumer products. Its fibres business unit faced persistent issues, generating little profit despite significant investments. Loudon called the unit one of Akzo's crown jewels, and he refused to divest. He stayed on as CEO until April 1994, shortly after the company merged with the Swedish company Nobel. He hoped that the merger would unify the organisation, describing Akzo's fragmented structure—shaped by mergers and acquisitions—as its greatest weakness. His earlier attempts to create a shared company culture led to him being called "Mister Akzo", and they were sometimes discarded as "centralist". Under his leadership, a new company logo depicting a man with his arms spread was introduced in 1988.

While CEO, Loudon sat on the executive board of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry, the board of directors of IBM Europe, the supervisory boards of De Nederlandsche Bank and the Royal Netherlands Blast Furnaces and Steelworks (1992–2002), and the international councils of J.P. Morgan & Co. and Allianz. Following his tenure, he stayed on as chair of AkzoNobel's supervisory board until 2005. Along with his successor as CEO, Kees van Lede, he publicly criticised the company's leadership in 2021, saying that it should bolster the finances of its pension fund.

Politics and supervisory committees

Loudon had become a member of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) in July 1977. When asked in 1994 by Frits Bolkestein to join the first Kok cabinet as Minister of Finance, he declined. He was elected to the Senate in May 1995, and he was sworn in on 13 June. He was his party's spokesperson for economic affairs and the environment, and his term ended on 7 June 1999. In a 2007 interview, Loudon called Henk Kamp his favourite VVD politician, and he rejected the more populist discourse of party members Rita Verdonk and Geert Wilders.

Following his retirement from AkzoNobel, he received the nickname "emperor of supervisors" for his membership of the supervisory boards of ABN AMRO (chair; 1994–2006), Royal Dutch Shell (1997–2007), Hollandsche Beton Groep (chair; 1995–2002), Heidemij (1994–1999), and NYSE Euronext. He was also on the advisory boards of Cinven and Lehman Brothers. Loudon was the inaugural chair of the organisation committee of Veterans' Day from 2004 until 2007, and was on the supervisory board of the Royal Concertgebouw and as vice chair of Vereniging Rembrandt.

While he led the supervisory board of Hollandsche Beton Group, the body favoured a merger with Ballast Nedam. A group of activist shareholders preferred a merger with Boskalis, and the Enterprise Chamber subsequently concluded that the supervisory board had mistreated the shareholders. The verdict was reversed by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands. In 2003, the Dutch Corporate Governance Code was released, strengthening the position of shareholders. Loudon criticised the document, arguing that the required transparency regarding management compensation led to an upward spiral in CEO salaries, and he stepped down from several boards in the years following. Loudon gave up his last position in 2008 at the Royal Concertgebouw. Following his tenure at ABN AMRO, the bank was split in 2007 and nationalised during the 2008 financial crisis. He was blamed for not doing enough to mediate conflicts within the board of directors. Loudon later said he was disappointed in the Dutch government and the bank's leadership for letting a proposed merger with ING Group fall through, as he believed it could have prevented both events.

Aarnout Loudon

Aarnout Loudon

Article

Early life and education

Related journals

Live room · 1 here

Article

Early life and education

Career

Akzo

Politics and supervisory committees

Personal life and death

Honours

Related journals