Uldis Upenieks has become board chairman of IPAS Citadele Asset Management (CAM). The nomination was approved by Citadele management and, on October 31, by the Finance and Capital Markets commission.
The outgoing board chairman of CAM is Vladimirs Ivanovs. He has handled several other important functions at the bank and will continue to serve as the director of the private capital management sector. Vladimirs is also a member of the councils of several bank subsidiaries.
“It is essential for the bank to develop the work of Citadele Asset Management more quickly, and that means that we need additional resources,” says CAM council chairman Juris Jākobsons. “That’s why we decided that our management team requires another strong professional who can devote all of his strength toward the development of CAM. Uldis Upenieks is a very strong professional and an outstanding strategist. He is very familiar with the Citadele Bank and, therefore, is perfect for this job.”
Uldis Upenieks has 17 years of experience in the financial sector, and he has spent the last 10 years working in the field of banking. For the last year-and-a-half he worked for PrivatBank – as a board member from May 2011 and as the head of internal audits for the PrivatBank Ukraine Group from November 2011. Prior to that, beginning in 2002, Uldis worked for the Parex Bank and then the Citadele Bank. He was responsible for client oversight, and for the past three years he was a vice president and the deputy director of the Risk and Compliance Directorate. Prior to joining the bank, Uldis Upenieks spent seven years at SIA Arthur Andersen Rīga. He holds a master’s degree in engineering management and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Rīga Technical University, and he is currently pursuing further studies at the Rīga School of Law.
Uldis says that the main thing now is to be active in planning and organising the further development of Citadele Asset Management. Asked to name three main areas of operation, he names the second-level pension plan, individual client portfolios, and institutional clients as areas in which improvements can be made.