Apobank again loses a board member

Alexander Mueller

The corporate customer board is leaving Apobank at the end of June at their own request.

(Photo: Apobank)

Frankfurt The pharmacist and doctor’s bank (Apobank) does not come to rest. She loses another board member. Corporate customer board member Alexander Müller is leaving Apobank at the end of June at his own request, as the money house announced on Thursday morning. The 49-year-old becomes CEO of the Volksbank in Offenburg and Villingen-Schwenningen, which is one of the largest Volksbanks in Germany.

Apobank recently announced plans to significantly expand asset management. Müller’s department, major customers and markets, becomes less important. In financial circles it was said that corporate customer sales would be merged with sales for private customers.

It is the fourth change since CEO Matthias Schellenberg took office in spring 2022 – an unusually large number. From the time before Schellenberg started, there will soon be no one left on the Apobank board.

Only a few weeks ago it became known that Holger Wessling, who was responsible for finance and IT at the time, would take over as CEO of Sparkasse Rhein-Nahe in the summer.

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In mid-September, private customer manager Jenny Friese left the company abruptly. The sudden departure points to major upheavals within the governing body. Friese has only been a member of the Apobank board since early 2021, and the former Commerzbank manager has been in charge of private customer business since May last year. Schellenberg took over her department.

Apobank has been struggling with problems for a long time

The former head of risk Eckhard Lüdering has also left the bank. He had accused Schellenberg of a conflict of interest. It was about the role of the consulting firm BCG, which has been commissioned by Apobank for around three years. A report commissioned by the Apobank supervisory board exonerated Schellenberg.

Sylvia Wilhelm and Thomas Runge have been new to the Apobank board since the beginning of the year. Wilhelm came to Apobank from Volkswagen Bank, she heads the risk department. Thomas Runge, previously at HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt, is responsible for IT, among other things.

Apobank, the second-largest cooperative bank in Germany after DZ Bank, has been struggling with problems for a long time: the bank recently failed to leverage the opportunities inherent in the business model, especially with regard to asset management. The customers of Apobank are considered to be much more attractive than those of an average savings bank or other cooperative banks.

2020 had already been a turbulent year at Apobank because the conversion of their IT went awry. The switch to the IT service provider Avaloq from Pentecost 2020 initially failed in parts. In the course of the migration, among other things, transfers and other simple banking services did not run smoothly.

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