Sabine Lautenschläger, a former banking supervisor, is set to join the supervisory board of Commerzbank, according to a media report. Lautenschläger, a former central banker, will succeed Jutta Dönges, who will step down from the control group at the annual general meeting on May 15, 2025, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.
Dönges, already a board member of a listed company, wants to reduce her additional mandates, the bank said. Dönges has been the chief financial officer of energy company Uniper since March 1, 2023.
Since the Commerzbank’s rescue in the 2008 financial crisis, the federal government has the right to propose two supervisory board members for the control group, although they are not subject to instructions. This right was contractually agreed upon during the state’s rescue of the bank in the financial crisis: as long as the federal government holds more than 10% of the shares, it can still propose two representatives, who must then be elected by the annual general meeting.
The second representative of the federal government is currently entrepreneur Harald Christ. Commerzbank declined to comment, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported. The Federal Ministry of Finance said it would not comment on personnel speculation.
In early September 2024, the federal government announced its exit from Commerzbank and sold a part of its shares to the Italian bank Unicredit. Unicredit may eventually take over the entire Commerzbank, but the government in Berlin is not enthusiastic, so it has kept the remaining 12% of the shares for the time being.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the Commerzbank will still be independent in the long term if Lautenschläger takes up her post in mid-2025. Unicredit CEO Andrea Orcel currently does not hold a seat on the Commerzbank supervisory board, as he considers the Frankfurt bank a financial investment for the time being.
Lautenschläger was the first woman in the executive board of the Bundesbank in 2011 and later became the vice president of the bank. She then followed the call to the European Central Bank in 2014, where she worked alongside Frenchwoman Danièle Nouy, leading the newly established European Banking Authority until 2019. She also sat on the ECB’s directorate with Mario Draghi at the helm. Commerzbank supervisory board chairman Jens Weidmann, the former head of the Bundesbank, knows Lautenschläger well.