New Leaseurope board of directors heralds two Brits

The new board also includes Vahid Daemi, CEO Leaseplan, and Martin Starck, chairman of the management board, LBBW Leasing, as vice chairs.

There are two representatives from the UK: George Ashworth (pictured), who is managing director, ABN AMRO Leasing UK, and Neil Cunningham, general manager, Hertz UK & Europe off airport.

Outgoing chair Jukka Salonen, COO, Nordea Group Simplification, said: “It has been a privilege to work with the board of directors, Leaseurope’s member associations and the secretariat staff in Brussels and I would like to thank everybody for their continuous support.

“Thanks to everyone’s commitment, we were able to actively represent the interests of the industry across a wide range of policy issues at European and international level and we were able to achieve many successes.”

Salonen highlighted Leaseurope’s position as the primary source of data, analysis and research for the industry and the association’s important role in advocacy and in bringing together senior-level industry practitioners.

New chair Duranti paid tribute to Salonen, who he said, had taken Leaseurope to the next level and would be “a tough act to follow”.  Duranti said his ambition was “to continue to promote our industry on all fronts, highlight its contribution to sustainable economic growth in Europe and position leasing and automotive rental companies as solution providers, whether in the field of mobility or otherwise.”

Duranti is currently CEO of Iccrea Bancalmpresa, the corporate bank belong to the Italian Credit Cooperative Banks owned by Iccreq Holding. He has previously held positions in corporate and specialised finance in San Paolo Bank, McKinsey and Mediocredito Centrale Group.

Leaseurope’s new board of directors will serve a two year term which runs until October 2016. The full line up of twelve also includes:

• Jose Coronel de Palma, managing director of Caterpillar Financial Renting;

• Marie-Christine Ducholet, CEO, Societe Generale Equipment Finance;

• Arkadiusz Etryk, CEO Idea Leasing;

• Morten Guldhaug, executive vice president, DNB;

• Jan Kusters, member of the DLL International executive board;

• Hugues Rougier, CEO Fraikin Group; and

• Alexander Schmidecker, CEO Raiffeisen Leasing.