At Commerzbank, another Sabine is coming in for Sabine Schmittroth, who will be leaving the company at the end of the year – at least if the Chairman of the Supervisory Board Helmut Gottschalk has his way.

According to information from the FAZ, the top controller at Commerzbank, who is considered meticulous, favors Sabine Mlnarsky.

The Austrian lawyer is currently Head of Human Resources at Erste Group Bank, i.e. the holding company and subsidiaries of the central institute of the Austrian savings banks.

Hanno Mussler

Editor in Business.

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However, the employee representatives on the Supervisory Board do have a say when it comes to appointing the Chief Human Resources Officer and thus also the Labor Director at Commerzbank AG.

And they don't just let Gottschalk's favorite happen, but made sure that a detailed job interview took place in Frankfurt on Monday afternoon.

Mlnarsky is not the only one who should take the time for this interview;

Rather, the employee representatives also wanted to get to know the other two women who had been included by the commissioned headhunter in the narrower circle of candidates (“short list”) for the post of Chief Human Resources Officer that would soon be vacant at Commerzbank, but who had apparently already been excluded by Gottschalk.

It was unclear on Monday evening whether the employee representatives would wave Gottschalk's favorite Mlnarsky through at the next supervisory board meeting in early July or even vote for one of the other two candidates.

Schmittroth with a difficult position

The only thing that is clear is that Schmittroth will give up her position at the end of the year.

Born in Bochum and turning 57 at the beginning of August, she replaced Michael Mandel on the board in 2000.

She had previously served him for five years as a divisional manager for private customers.

Schmittroth took on the task of HR director in addition to that of private customer director.

When Commerzbank then decided on extensive staff reductions, Schmittroth was under a lot of pressure.

When the new CEO Manfred Knof took office on January 1, 2021, Commerzbank then broke with the old private customer strategy. Schmittroth lacked internal credibility.

Your potential successor Sabine Mlnarsky, who claims to have studied law in Vienna from 1992 to 1998 and worked for Austrian Airlines for almost three years before and after a period at Erste Bank, would not be the only former Erste Bank board member in the Commerzbank.

The new private customer board member Thomas Schaufler also came from Erste Group Bank AG in December 2021.