At today’s meeting, the Supervisory Board of Commerzbank made personnel decisions in order to establish the Board Team for the far-reaching transformation that has been set in train in the context of Strategy 2024.

Thomas Schaufler, currently Board Member for Retail Banking at Erste Group Bank AG in Austria, will take responsibility for Private and Small-Business Customers at Commerzbank on 1 January 2022. Currently, Sabine Schmittroth is responsible for this segment. The appointment of Thomas Schaufler to the Board of Managing Directors is still subject to the usual approval by the regulatory authority.

As already announced in June, Sabine Schmittroth will return to focusing fully on her role as Labour Relations Director. As part of the transformation and the associated implementation in human resources, this function is particularly important.

The Supervisory Board has also appointed Dr Jörg Oliveri del Castillo-Schulz as the new COO on the Board of Managing Directors. The appointment of Jörg Oliveri del Castillo-Schulz is still subject to the usual approval by the regulatory authority. Once this approval has been granted, he will succeed Jörg Hessenmüller, whose appointment as Member of the Board of Managing Directors at Commerzbank will end at the latest on 31 December 2021. Jörg Hessenmüller offered his resignation with the aim of giving the Bank the opportunity for a new beginning.

The Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Helmut Gottschalk, commented as follows on the new appointments: “The newly formed Board Team combines a long track record of management experience with great depth of specialist expertise and furthermore secures the necessary focus for implementing Strategy 2024.”

CEO Manfred Knof added: “The task now is to develop our full potential as a team and to consistently transform Commerzbank further – to become THE digital advisory bank in Germany, which stands for customer centricity, sustainability and profitability.”

Since January 2021, Thomas Schaufler has been Board Member with responsibility for Retail Banking at Erste Group Bank AG in Austria and Board Member of Erste Bank der österreichischen Sparkassen AG. Thomas Schaufler joined Erste Group already in 1997 and since then he has held various management positions in retail banking. In February 2016, he was appointed as Board Member of Erste Bank der österreichischen Sparkassen AG, where he is responsible for retail business, business with small businesses and independent advisors, private banking, asset management, marketing and product management. Thomas Schaufler is a Certificated European Financial Analyst and obtained a master’s degree at the University of Applied Sciences for Management & Communication.

Dr Jörg Oliveri del Castillo-Schulz is currently an independent consultant for strategy and transformation projects. As COO and CHRO, he was most recently responsible for the areas of IT, digitalisation, operations, sourcing and human resources as Board Member of IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG from 2016 to 2020. Jörg Oliveri del Castillo-Schulz is a business economist, he took a Master of Business Administration at Edinburgh University Management School and obtained his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His professional career took him to various board and senior management positions at institutions including Deutsche Bank and at other financial services providers in Germany, Europe and the United Kingdom, where he was responsible for the transformation of business and operating models, companies also at national level, and for restructuring projects, sourcing activities and services.

Jörg Hessenmüller has driven forward the digital transformation of Commerzbank with great commitment. The technical and cultural initiatives were particularly important and these enabled him to give his board division a new profile. The agile cluster/delivery organisation “Campus 2.0” created by him received significant accolades throughout the sector.

Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Helmut Gottschalk commented: “We would like to thank Jörg Hessenmüller for his commitment as a Board Member and for his many years of cooperation at the Bank, with broadly-based management responsibility. We would like to wish him all the best for the future.”