A crack goes through the board of directors of the Apotheker- und Ärztebank.

According to information from the FAZ, a board member is currently negotiating a termination agreement with the supervisory board: Jenny Friese, who only switched from Commerzbank to the largest German cooperative bank as a board member for major customers and markets at the beginning of January 2022, is apparently dissatisfied with the course taken by CEO Matthias Schellenberg.

And risk director Eckhard Lüdering is said not to be ready to extend his contract at the moment.

None of the people named responded to inquiries from the FAZ by Friday afternoon. Holger Wessling, on the other hand, denied information to the FAZ that he was negotiating a termination agreement.

The spokeswoman for Apobank declined to comment.

Hanno Mussler

Editor in Business.

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The IT glitch, which gave it many angry customers in the summer of 2020, is still having an effect in the Apotheker- und Ärztebank.

In December 2021, CEO Ulrich Sommer left abruptly.

Sommer was succeeded by Matthias Schellenberg, who was previously on the board of the Swiss bank UBS, chairman of the board of the Munich private bank Merck Finck and for a short time on the board of MM Warburg.

In the Apobank, Schellenberg is apparently using the consultants from Boston Consulting to examine potential savings – which, of course, not everyone likes.

For example, there were reports that the bank would only offer standardized asset management in the future, but no longer offer securities advice.

The Apobank is traditionally strong in the practice financing of doctors and pharmacists, most recently it also provided short-term liquidity support when the prescription billing center AVP went bankrupt in 2020 and thousands of pharmacies found themselves in need of existence.

However, according to observers, Apobank, with its approximately 4,000 employees, does not do enough to win the actually low-risk and often wealthy clientele of doctors and pharmacists for its private customer business.

The bureaucracy costs, for example in securities advice, have risen so sharply for all banks in recent years that other banks such as Metzler only offer asset management.

The surplus of 65 achieved by Apobank in 2021,

Schellenberg's commitment to the position of CEO in March 2022 was still under the aegis of the then Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Ulrich Montgomery.

However, the radiologist and world medical president Montgomery was controversial as the head of the supervisory board of the quite large Apobank.

Contrary to expectations, the supervisory board did not choose Gerhard Hofmann, the former Bundesbanker and BVR board member who was well-versed in bank management issues, as his successor at the end of April, but rather the dentist and vice-head of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Dentists, Karl-Georg Pochhammer.

He now has to see if he can mend the crack in the board again.

According to reports, however, the Apobank already has a replacement in mind.

Two new board members could be committed, one from the bank HSBC, the other from the VW finance division.