Newly minted unicorn Mollie adds new chair from UBS

Mollie has appointed the outgoing vice-chairman of Global Wealth Management at UBS Eli Leenaars as the new chair of its board of directors. 

Leenaars and Muz Ashraf, Principal at TCV, will both join the board of the payment service provider, which has become one of Europe’s latest fintech unicorns following its €90m Series B funding round late last year. The round was led by TCV,  which also backs fellow fintechs Revolut and WorldRemit.

Leenaars will step down from his role at UBS on 31 May. Leenaars was on the board of ING Bank for more than a decade prior to joining UBS in 2015 and has also been a member of the board at Capital One since 2019. 

Ashraf has been with TCV for more than five years, overseeing investments in companies such as Klarna,Mambu and Spryker.

“Mollie’s supervisory board includes some incredible fintech talent, and that’s critical as we scale across Europe,” says Shane Happach, CEO, Mollie, who joined the firm last month.

Leenaars and Ashraf join Miriam van Dongen (Vice Chair), Koen Köppen (CTO, Klarna) and Teun van Rappard (Partner, Imker Capital Partners) on Mollie’s supervisory board.

Mollie expanded to the UK for the first time at the start of 2021, allowing its UK SME users to add EU payment methods to their online checkouts for the first time and appointing Josh Guthrie as its first UK country head.