Successful search: Deutsche Bank shares: nomination to succeed Supervisory Board Chairman Achleitner | newsletter

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Deutsche Bank offers a successor to its outgoing supervisory board chairman Paul Achleitner — and makes a surprising coup: Alexander (Alex) Weinandz Achleitner is set to inherit Achleitner after its annual general meeting on May 19, 2022, Germany’s largest financial institution announced Friday night in Frankfurt.

The Oversight Board Nominating Committee recommends that Wynaendts propose to shareholders for election to the Oversight Board at the next general meeting. “It is intended that he will subsequently be elected as President and therefore the successor to Paul Achleitner,” the announcement read. The recommendation is subject to full supervisory board approval.

Dutch Wynaendts – read: Weinnds – rather than Weimer, Witter or Winkeljohann. Meanwhile, all three Deutsche Bank’s supervisory boards have been traded as potential candidates for Achleitner’s successor: Deutsche Presse-President Theodor Weimer, former Volkswagen CFO Frank Witter and longtime European head of auditing firm PwC and current Bayer chairman Norbert Winkeljohan.

Deutsche Bank has also scheduled the training course for the weekend for a member of its executive board: Olivier Vigneron is set to become the new head of risk management on June 1, 2022, the company announced on Sunday. The incumbent, Stuart Lewis, will leave the House of Money at his request after the 2022 Annual General Meeting after 25 years of service. Vigneron, who is currently Head of Risk Management at French bank Natixis, is due to join Deutsche Bank on March 1, 2022 as General Manager, where he worked from 2002 to 2005.

The bank justified Wynaendt’s nomination (61) by saying that the director had “extensive experience and decades of experience in the financial sector around the world”. Wynaendts began his career at ABN Amro, spending 13 years in private banking and investment banking in Amsterdam and London. From 2008 to 2020, he was president of the Dutch insurance group AEGON. Wynaendts is currently a member of several supervisory and management boards, including Citigroup, Uber Technologies and Air France KLM. He will relinquish his tenure at Citigroup.

Investment firm Union Investment is skeptical about Wynaendts’ nomination. “From his previous positions, it is not clear that he is familiar with German corporate governance. He has never run a large bank himself,” Jan Werning, the union’s investment director, told Handelsblatt (Monday). Ferning said the finance house was “certainly wanting a proper internship for an overseas successor”.

According to Deutsche Bank President Christian Swing, Wynaendts “means exactly what has always made Deutsche Bank special”: “It 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, Swing praised how “organized and trusted” the nominating committee designed the process for Achleitner’s successor was.

Achleitner held one of the most important positions in the German economy for a remarkably long time. But after ten years as chairman of Deutsche Bank’s supervisory board, he is supposed to end in 2022, as the 65-year-old Austrian has repeatedly emphasized.

As recently as 2019, Achleitner appeared to be the chief inspector on probation, and contributors demanded the “de-selection” of the Achleitner system. It’s become increasingly clear since taking office in mid-2012: the house was by no means “clean,” as Joseph Ackermann promised in the spring of 2012 when he left after a decade as president of Deutsche Bank.

While US competition liquidated balance sheets and companies immediately after the financial crisis, Deutsche Bank pulled things off. And Achleitner had to grapple with the question of whether the financial institution would not be in a better position for long if the supervisory board did not retain the wrong managers for too long. Sewing is the fourth head of the Achleitner Group.

For a long time it looked as if Achleitner, once celebrated as a dealmaker, had lost his luck in the colossal task of reorganizing Deutsche Bank. But Swing’s balance sheet so far gives the Dax Group’s highest-paid chief observer hope once again that it will be able to leave next year with the bank paying a profit for the first time since fiscal 2018. “Our bank is stable, and has been Dealing with many, if not all, of the problems of past years. In the internal letter, the seamstress was praised: “Achleitner’s leadership has made a significant contribution to the successful transformation of our bank.”

At the 2022 shareholder meeting, the Nominating Committee will also put on the agenda the election of another Vice Chair of the Supervisory Board in addition to employee representative Detlev Polachek. Norbert Winkeljohan will be suggested for this position.

/ ben / he / tos / DP / men

Frankfurt (dpa-AFX)

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