POPOVIĆ Darko
President of the Executive Board, Banca Intesa
Darko Popović has spent the last thirteen years on the position of the Executive Board member of Banca Intesa, the largest bank in Serbia and a member of Intesa Sanpaolo, the leading Eurozone bank according to the market capitalisation. He started his career at the National Bank of Serbia as a supervisor, where he gained a broad banking experience while participating in a comprehensive project of finance sector restructuring, directly working on diagnostic and due diligence of as many as 17 banks. He continued to build his career as a banker at Banca Intesa, spending first five years in a Bank as a Risk Manager, and later assuming the position of the Head of the Risk Management Department. During this period, he was one of the founding members of the Risk and Capital Management Committee created within the Association of Serbian Banks, and soon after was appointed its Chairman. In 2008, he moved further to business, working directly with clients when he became the Head of the Corporate Division and a member of the Executive Board. During his term as an Executive Board member, the Bank took over the leading position in the market according to all performance indicators, increased its market share and reached a record-high share of 17.3%, with its portfolio amounting to EUR 1.9 billion.
Taking into account a strategic commitment of the Bank to further strengthen its position in the retail segment, he assumed the position of Head of the Retail and Small Business Division in 2014, which he still holds today. Initiating and managing a comprehensive transformation of the processes while building strategic frameworks, he managed to strengthen the capacities of the Division and, by managing 2,200 employees and 155 branches, in six years, achieved a 500 bps increase of the market share, which positioned Banca Intesa a leading retail bank in the market. During 2017, the Retail Division became the most significant generator of the added value within the Bank by contributing in over a half of the overall loan portfolio of the Bank, thus achieving its strategic goal. While achieving commercial goals, he concurrently leads the digital strategy of the Bank, and manages global projects, aiming at reshaping the quality of services offered to over 1.3 million clients in domestic market. One of those projects was the establishment of the asset management company Intesa Invest, which started operating in 2018, and he is a member of its Supervisory Board. During a two-year period, the company launched three funds, combined assets of which reached EUR 120 million.
He has been the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Intesa Leasing since 2013, which became the biggest leasing company in Serbia in the meantime.
He graduated from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Belgrade, while continuously attending different prominent educational programs in the field of leadership and management at the most prestigious Universities, such as the Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business and the London Business School. He is a member of the Belgrade Faculty of Economics Alumni Associations Board of Directors. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Serbian Association of Managers.