The result doesn’t really give reason to be in a bad mood: Allianz has presented record figures – once again. In operational terms, the Munich-based insurer earned 3.5 billion euros between July and September – more than ever before in a third quarter. Shareholders will be rewarded with a new share buyback program.
The Allianz figures are one thing, the statements of their CEO are another. In public, the sayings of group leader Oliver Bäte often get more attention than the results: sometimes he complains about his own IT systems and blasphemes about managers and employees of the insurance group.
This is said to have happened at an internal event in May, of which the “Wirtschaftswoche” was able to see a video recording. Sometimes Bäte denounces the population’s lost trust in politics in general. Public institutions can no longer meet people’s expectations, he complained at the Handelsblatt’s “Insurance Summit”.
Bäte likes to look for mistakes in others
One pattern is striking: Bäte usually looks for mistakes in others.
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With regard to the hedge fund scandal at the US subsidiary AGI, through which major investors lost a lot of money in the corona pandemic, he likes to talk about the misconduct of individual fund managers. On Wednesday, he described them as a “few bad apples at a top company.”
For outsiders, Bäte’s performances are entertaining. The former McKinsey man rarely keeps his opinions to himself. For the Alliance, however, Bäte introduces a degree of unpredictability when he talks himself into a rage and deviates from the pre-written script. That doesn’t go down well with everyone. But as long as the figures are correct, the group apparently lets him do it.
More: Allianz again exceeds expectations – “Results show strength”, says CEO Bäte