Marcus Schenck's mission was at 12 noon on Friday

Fulfills.

In Berlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stepped in front of cameras and microphones to announce the billion-euro rescue package for the badly hit Düsseldorf energy group Uniper after weeks of deadlock.

Schenck, a financial professional employed by the American investment bank Lazard, played a key role in negotiating the deal.

The federal government had hired the banker as a consultant.

Marcus Theurer

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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The 56-year-old Schenck was an obvious choice for the negotiation poker for Germany's by far most important natural gas importer.

After all, he not only knows his way around financial transactions, but also in the energy sector.

Schenck, who was born in the Allgäu and has a doctorate in economics, was CFO of the energy group Eon from 2006 to 2013 and at that time helped to steer the Düsseldorf-based company through a turbulent phase of upheaval in the energy market, which included the German nuclear phase-out.

After a brief stint at Goldman Sachs' European headquarters in London, Schenck returned home in 2015 as Chief Financial Officer of Deutsche Bank, where the manager was also responsible for investment banking.

He almost became head of Deutsche Bank, but in the end his way to the top of Germany's most important bank was blocked.

Instead of Schenck, the rival made Christian Sewing

the race to succeed hapless CEO John Cryan.

Schenck then left Deutsche Bank and joined the London investment bank Perella Weinberg in 2019, for which he established a foothold in Germany from Munich.

He finally joined Lazard this summer.

It's a small world: Perella Weinberg's ex-colleagues sat on the other side of the negotiating table for the Uniper deal that Schenck helped engineer in the past few weeks.

You advised the Finnish Fortum Group, which is the majority shareholder of Uniper.

Most experts believe that there is no alternative to the rescue of the Düsseldorf company by the German state that has now been decided.

Because the wholesaler Uniper accounts for around 60 percent of all German natural gas imports, which is why it is considered systemically important.

But the group, like the whole country, is dependent on supplies from Russia.

Because these are now largely absent, Uniper has to buy gas at sky-high prices, which put the company in financial difficulties.

At the end of January, Uniper boss Klaus-Dieter Maubach described Russia as an “absolutely reliable” natural gas supplier in an interview with the FAS.

Now Maubach's company becomes an emergency being bailed out by the taxpayer.

The aid package announced on Friday provides for a loan from the state bank KfW for Uniper, which has been greatly expanded from EUR 2 billion to EUR 9 billion.

In addition, he will be helped with a convertible bond of 7.7 billion euros, which is comparable to equity in accounting terms.

With a stake of around 30 percent, the federal government will become a major shareholder in Uniper and will have the right to veto important strategic decisions.

The stake held by the Finnish main shareholder Fortum, on the other hand, will be diluted from 80 to 56 percent due to the entry of the German state.

The investment banker Schenck has thus carried out its task for the first time.

But it is quite possible that the Chancellor will soon need advice again in similar cases.

His government is ready to save other important German energy companies if necessary, Scholz said on Friday.