The time of speculation is over: Deutsche Bank has picked out a successor for Chairman of the Supervisory Board Paul Achleitner.
The personality is a surprise.
Frankfurt / Main - Deutsche Bank * presents a successor for its outgoing supervisory board chairman Paul Achleitner - and lands a surprise coup with it.
Alexander (Alex) Wynaendts is to inherit Achleitner after the annual general meeting on May 19, 2022, as Germany's largest financial institution announced on Friday evening in Frankfurt.
The nomination committee of the supervisory board recommends that the shareholders propose Wynaendts for election to the supervisory body at the general meeting next year.
"It is intended to subsequently elect him as chairman and thus as successor to Paul Achleitner," says the announcement.
The supervisory board followed the recommendation of the nomination committee on Sunday.
The Dutchman Wynaendts instead of Weimer, Witter or Winkeljohann.
All three Deutsche Bank supervisory boards had in the meantime been traded as possible candidates for the Achleitner successor: Deutsche Börse boss Theodor Weimer, ex-Volkswagen CFO Frank Witter and the long-standing European head of the auditing company PwC and today's Bayer supervisory board chairman Norbert Winkeljohann.
Deutsche Bank: Olivier Vigneron is to become Chief Risk Officer
Deutsche Bank also set the course for a board member at the weekend: Olivier Vigneron is to become the new Chief Risk Officer on June 1, 2022, as the company announced on Sunday.
Incumbent Stuart Lewis will leave the money house at his own request after the 2022 Annual General Meeting after 25 years of service.
Vigneron, currently Chief Risk Officer of the French bank Natixis, is due to join Deutsche Bank on March 1, 2022, initially as a general representative, at which he worked from 2002 to 2005.
The bank justified Wynaendts' (61) nomination by stating that the manager had “extensive expertise and decades of experience in the financial sector worldwide”.
Wynaendts began his professional career at ABN Amro, where he spent 13 years in private banking and investment banking in Amsterdam and London.
From 2008 to 2020 he was head of the Dutch insurance group Aegon.
Wynaendts is currently a member of several supervisory and administrative boards, including Citigroup, Uber Technologies and Air France KLM.
He will give up his mandate at Citigroup.
Deutsche Bank: Criticism of Wynaendts
The investment company Union Investment is skeptical about Wynaendts' nomination. “From his previous positions it is not evident that he is familiar with German corporate governance. He also never ran a large bank himself, ”said Union Investment Manager Janne Werning to“ Handelsblatt ”. The fund house would have "definitely wished for an appropriate familiarization period for an external successor," said Werning.
According to Deutsche Bank boss Christian Sewing, Wynaendts “stands for exactly what has always made Deutsche Bank special”: “He has extensive experience in the financial sector and an excellent network, not only in Europe but also globally. In an internal email to the workforce, Sewing praised how “structured and confident” the nomination committee had designed the process for Achleitner's successor.
Deutsche Bank: Achleitner has long been considered the chief inspector on call
Achleitner held one of the most important posts in the German economy for a remarkably long time.
But after ten years as chairman of the Deutsche Bank supervisory board, 2022 should end, as the 65-year-old Austrian had repeatedly affirmed.
As recently as 2019, Achleitner appeared to be a chief inspector on probation, and shareholders demanded that the Achleitner system be "deselected".
It has become increasingly clear since he took office in mid-2012: The house was by no means “swept clean”, as Josef Ackermann had promised in spring 2012 when he left after a decade as head of Deutsche Bank.
While the US competition cleared balance sheets and business immediately after the financial crisis, Deutsche Bank muddled through.
And Achleitner had to put up with the question of whether the financial house would not be in a better position for a long time if the supervisory board had not held onto the wrong managers for too long.
Sewing is the fourth CEO in the Achleitner era.
Deutsche Bank hopes for first profit since 2018
For a long time it looked as if Achleitner, once celebrated as a deal maker, had lost his luck with the mammoth task of realigning Deutsche Bank.
But Sewing's previous balance sheet gives the highest-paid chief inspector of a Dax group hope that he can crown his farewell next year with the bank paying out profit for the first time since the 2018 financial year.
"Our bank is stable, many, if not all, problems of past years have been dealt with," Achleitner sums up at this year's general meeting.
In the internal letter, Sewing praised: Achleitner's leadership had “made a major contribution to the successful transformation of our bank”.
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According to the will of the nomination committee, the election of a further deputy chairman of the supervisory board in addition to the employee representative Detlef Polaschek is to be put on the agenda at the shareholders' meeting in 2022.
Norbert Winkeljohann is to be proposed for this position.
(dpa)
