The tax expert is to be elected to the Deutsche Post supervisory board on Friday.
(Photo: imago images/Jens Schicke)
Dusseldorf The nomination last December was not enough for a new female appointment to the top of Deutsche Post’s board of directors – although many had firmly expected CFO Melanie Kreis to rise to the post of chairwoman. Instead, Tobias Meyer is to take over from Frank Appel in May 2023.
The supervisory board is now retrofitting for this. If the Annual General Meeting waves through the meeting proposal this Friday, the number of female members in the 20-strong control body will increase from seven to eight – and thus to an easily calculated quota of 40 percent.
The professor, tax expert and once successful dressage rider Luise Hölscher, who was appointed by a judge in March – and thus provisionally – is to be formally elected to the supervisory board. The 50-year-old, who Christian Lindner (FDP) brought to the Federal Ministry of Finance after the change of government, replaces State Secretary Jörg Kukies, who moved to the Chancellery in December, on the supervisory board of the Bonn-based Dax group.
But the choice is controversial. On Wednesday, the asset manager DWS sent a letter in advance, in which the planned new appointments to the supervisory board were sharply criticized. “We do not consider the representatives of the major shareholders, KfW and the federal government, to be independent,” it says.
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Background: Traditionally, it is the Ministry of Finance that monitors the 20.5 percent state share in Post – after all, the block of shares is held by the KfW Bank, which is under Lindner’s legal supervision. It is only noteworthy that the most recent change of power in Berlin, of all things, ensured that the SPD politician Kukies, Hölscher, is now followed in the Post Tower by a state representative who has a CDU party book.
After all, the capital side now has the same number of female representatives as the employee bank. As early as 2011, the former state-owned company won Bremen professor Katja Windt for the supervisory board, and in 2014 Simone Menne, who once served as chief financial officer for Lufthansa and the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim, was added. Menne is a member of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. Since 2016, Ingrid Deltenre has also been part of the control committee. The media expert was previously the head of the Zurich television and radio station SRF.
>> Read here: Unusual dilemma at Deutsche Post: the money has to go
As the second newcomer, the general meeting on Friday is also to elect Stefan Wintels to the supervisory board. The business graduate from Lower Saxony, who worked for Deutsche Bank and Citigroup for a number of years, succeeded Günther Bräunig at the head of KfW at the beginning of November 2021. Bräunig’s contract there allegedly expired at the end of June 2021, so he made room on the Deutsche Post supervisory board.
Wintel’s election to the top control body of Deutsche Post is also controversial. The 55-year-old, who is considered to be close to the SPD, has been on the Deutsche Telekom supervisory board for KfW since April 7. Explosive in this context: While the head of KfW at Deutsche Post is supposed to supervise Frank Appel, Appel is superior to him on the Deutsche Telekom supervisory board as head of the supervisory board.
DWS announces resistance
In any case, there had been sharp criticism from shareholder representatives when Appel was elected Telekom chief controller – also on April 7th. According to the Corporate Governance Code enacted by the state, the CEO of a DAX company should under no circumstances simultaneously be the chairman of the supervisory board of another. The fact that two Dax companies with significant state participation violated this rule recently made the matter a political issue.
DWS has now announced resistance at the general meeting. “As already explained at the Deutsche Telekom shareholders’ meeting, we cannot approve the election of Mr. Stefan Wintels due to the large number of seats he holds,” he announced in advance in his statement. “In his function as CEO of KfW, he has already reached our mandate limit of three mandates, with one chairmanship counting twice.” Union Investment also wants to vote against Wintels.
More: With the personnel of Frank Appel, the state undermines its own rules