From March on, the ex-Merck Finck board member will take over the cooperative bank.
(Photo: Apobank)
Frankfurt The Apotheker- und Ärztebank (Apobank) has found a new boss. Matthias Schellenberg is to take over as CEO from March 1st, Apobank announced on Friday.
This means that Apobank can announce that the position has been filled six weeks after the sudden departure of long-time CEO Ulrich Sommer. Sommer had left the money house on December 10, and the bank had only made the departure public on the same day.
Sommer had been on the board of the cooperatively organized money house for ten years, and he had been at the helm from 2017. His contract would have actually run until next summer.
Schellenberg was most recently at the private bank Merck Finck, where he was CEO from 2017 to 2020. Almost two years ago, Merck Finck announced that Schellenberg was leaving the company at the end of 2020.
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The 57-year-old had previously been a member of the board of the major Swiss bank UBS in Germany and worked for ING and MM Warburg, among others. Supervisory Board Chairman Frank Ulrich Montgomery considers Schellenberg “with his extensive expertise in many facets of banking and his winning personality” as an ideal candidate for the Management Board of Apobank.
Problems when switching to new IT
With a balance sheet total of almost 66 billion euros, Apobank, based in Düsseldorf, is the second largest cooperative bank in Germany – behind DZ Bank, the central institute of the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken. Apobank had to accept a lot of criticism last year due to the mishaps at the start of its IT conversion.
The switch to the new 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.
Some of the IT problems lasted for several weeks. Even after several months, some direct debits and returned direct debits were not executed correctly. Customers get angry.
In the past year and a half, Apobank has already extensively restructured its board of directors, including some changes in responsibilities. CFO Thomas Siekmann left the bank at the end of April 2021. In the summer of 2020, Olaf Klose, board member for private customers, and Apobank had already gone their separate ways.
A year ago, Jenny Friese switched from Commerzbank to Apobank, the 47-year-old is the head of private customers. The 48-year-old Alexander Müller also moved up to the board. The other two management positions were occupied by Chief Risk Officer Eckhard Lüdering and Chief Financial Officer and IT Director Holger Wessling.
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