Klarna, the buy-now-pay-later company based in Stockholm that is very close to going public, is still changing its board
The FT says seven directors have just agreed to remove investor Mikael Walther from Klarna’s eight-person board, almost eight years after he started. Walther is close with Klarna co-founder Victor Jacobsson, who is still a big shareholder and is said to be a bother to co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski, who has been CEO of Klarna for almost 20 years since Jacobsson left in 2012.
For Klarna, this is the second big change in their board this year. Once he joined the board in January, Sequoia Capital investor Matt Miller was said to push for the removal of well-known VC Michael Moritz, wrote Klarna’s first check for Sequoia in 2010, and is still the chair of the company even though he retired from Sequoia last year. Miller and Moritz had a lot of problems right away.
About six weeks later, after a fight in the press, Sequoia said sorry, fired Miller, and hired a third partner, Andrew Reed, who is still working for the company.