Boss of UK tech company to take three months off to care for baby

THE boss of one Britain’s biggest tech companies has announced plans to take an “overdue” three-month sabbatical to take care of his newborn son.

Wise co-founder and chief executive Kristo Kaarmann plans to take his first sabbatical since starting the foreign exchange business 12 years ago.

Mr Kaarmann said: “This is a fantastic time to do my part in looking after the newborn and giving some breathing room to my wife.”

Harsh Sinha, Wise’s chief technology officer, will take over during Mr Kaarmann’s extended sabbatical from September to December this year.

Staff at the London-listed company are entitled to fully paid sabbatical after four years at the firm, in addition to annual leave.

The sabbatical is designed to give employees time to “switch off, reset, and rebalance”, Mr Kaarmann wrote in a blog post on Wise’s website. The

Estonian-born chief executive noted that taking time away from the team would have been “unimaginable” when Wise launched in 2011, then called Transferwise.

“In fact, I remember clearly the first time I was able to completely switch off since starting Wise was in December 2014, when I took Christmas off to go on

our honeymoon,” he said. Mr Kaarmann, who previously worked at Deloitte and PWC, also said that Wise’s aim to solve hidden fees and modernise international financial services has always been “a mission for the decades, not years”. He said: “We’ve come a long way, but I also know that we’re going to get much bigger and faster in the next few years, so this a good time to take that break and be charged up for the next stage on this rocket.”

Mr Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus founded the business after the pair endured high fees for sending money overseas.

Wise, which operates money transfers and debit cards, allows consumers to send money abroad or exchange currencies at a lower rate than banks.

It now serves 16m people and businesses across the world.

The founders previously threatened to move its headquarters to the EU, with Mr Hinrikus, an outspoken Brexit critic, saying he would no longer have picked the UK if he was founding his company again.

The currency transfer business was valued at £8bn when it floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2021, in one of the City’s largest-ever tech listings.