(Bloomberg) -- The board of Sweden’s biggest pension fund turned down Chairman Ingrid Bonde’s offer to resign and instead opted to remove the chief executive officer after Alecta became one of the largest overseas casualties of the meltdown at Silicon Valley Bank.

Bonde had suggested stepping down, “being in some way ultimately responsible,” she said in an interview on Tuesday after the board fired CEO Magnus Billing as it grapples with the fallout from almost $2 billion of losses. 

“I have been urged and persuaded by the board to continue to support the company in this work,” Bonde said. The pension fund’s supervisory board, which is appointed by employer organization Svenskt Naringsliv and a number of unions, sits above the board of directors, and approved Bonde’s continued mandate, she said.

The ousting of Billing, who has been at the firm since 2016, is the most dramatic personnel fallout yet from the scandal, which saw the fund take losses on investments in Silicon Valley Bank parent SVB Financial Group, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank. No other pension fund had bet on the three niche US banks to the extent that Alecta had. 

Letting Billing go “was a difficult decision” that the board “agonized” over, Bonde said, because Billing had “done a very good job as CEO of the company for a long time.”

Alecta, which oversees the savings of 2.6 million Swedes, has 1.2 trillion kronor ($115 billion) under management. It has made a conscious choice to pile into a limited number of equities to improve returns, a model the chairman said was “very successful” for an extended period but with a flip side that “there will be major consequences if there is an incorrect decision — and that is what has happened.”

Billing, who had admitted the foray into the US was “a big failure,” has repeatedly sought to downplay its significance, saying the losses were equal to less than 2% of the fund’s capital.

Deputy CEO Katarina Thorslund has been appointed as acting CEO while the fund looks for a new leader. The head of customer relations joined Alecta two decades ago, working her way up the ranks from actuarial and financial management roles.

Alecta’s supervisory board meets April 20 to decide on discharging the board from liability as well as to appoint members for a new term.

The fund has also put its head of equity portfolio management, Liselott Ledin, on leave, replacing her with Ann Grevelius, a member of Alecta’s board of directors.

The need to restore trust is what led to the CEO’s departure rather than any new revelations since Ledin’s removal, Bonde said.

“We have had renewed discussions and in various ways tried to see how we can restore trust,” she said. “Our conclusion is that we need a new management to achieve this. It is absolutely, purely a matter of trust — after all, what we offer our customers is safety.” 

--With assistance from Thomas Hall and Anton Wilen.

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