The federal government is apparently preparing for a permanent stake in Commerzbank. According to ntv information, she sends Harald Christ to the supervisory board. The 50-year-old is well connected in politics and business.
Commerzbank is getting a new supervisory board: according to ntv information, the federal government is sending Harald Christ to the supervisory board. The 50-year-old entrepreneur worked for Deutsche Bank, among others.
Christ was in the SPD for more than three decades before joining the FDP in 2020. He has good contacts in the Ministry of Finance, which is led by his fellow party member Christian Lindner. Because he has been a member of the SPD for many years, he has a connection to the Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Christ is also a member of the Verdi service union and is also well networked in business.
The personnel could indicate that the federal government currently has no plans to withdraw from the partially nationalized bank. Since the financial crisis, the federal government has been Commerzbank’s largest single shareholder with a current stake of 15.6 percent. The federal government is currently reorganizing state control at the financial institution. Against this background, there will also be a change at the top of the supervisory board after the general meeting at the end of May next year: the former Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann will then become chief controller of the partially nationalized institute.
Weidmann knows Commerzbank from difficult times: when the institute overreached itself in the financial crisis of 2008/2009 with the Dresdner Bank takeover and had to be saved from collapsing with billions in taxes, Weidmann was one of the leading advisors to the then Chancellor Angela Merkel the Department of Economic and Financial Policy in the Chancellery. Weidmann belonged to the group of top officials who put together rescue packages for struggling banks.
