The ranks are thinning on the board of the Apotheker- und Ärztebank.

Finance and IT board member Holger Wessling is now about to jump.

The 54-year-old Wessling becomes CEO of the Sparkasse Rhein-Nahe with almost 700 employees and a balance sheet total of around 6.3 billion euros.

Apobank in Düsseldorf announced Wessling's departure early Tuesday evening after the board of directors of the savings bank based in Bad Kreuznach, Rhineland-Palatinate, had appointed him.

Hanno Mussler

Editor in Business.

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Wessling is already the third board member of the Apotheker- und Ärztebank (Apobank) to announce his departure this six-month period.

In September, Jenny Friese and Eckhard Lüdering left the board after a quarrel with the CEO Matthias Schellenberg Knall, who took office in March 2022.

Lüdering had even reported Schellenberg to the supervisory board for a conflict of interest, from which Schellenberg was freed with an expert opinion.

In September, Wessling denied it

As early as September there was information that Wessling, who has been on the Apobank board since 2016, could also resign along with the two board members Friese and Lüdering.

At that time, Wessling denied the FAZ: “To avoid any misunderstandings.

I will stay with Apobank,” he wrote.

To what extent Wessling's departure was already in the offing at the time can only be speculated about.

Wessling himself did not initially respond to a corresponding question on Tuesday.

It is clear that the Management Board of Apobank will be increased by two new Management Board members on January 1, 2023: Thomas Runge comes from HSBC Trinkaus, Sylvia Wilhelm from Volkswagen Bank.

Wilhelm will take over the risk department that Wessling has taken over on an interim basis, Runge will take over Wessling's IT department, which was almost certain when he announced his accession.

In this respect, Wessling could feel that he has been stepped on.

However, people who know him better describe Wessling as someone whose heart is less in IT than in customer business.

In this respect, the chairmanship of the board of Sparkasse Rhein-Nahe is an attractive career step,

although Apobank, with its 2,200 employees and total assets of 67 billion euros, is four to ten times the size of Sparkasse and, because of its size, is subject to the banking supervision of the ECB.

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.

After Wessling's departure, the Apobank board of directors is said to not be increased to five members.

It does not appear that it has yet been decided who will take over the finance department.

Wessling is said to have announced an orderly handover for IT and finance and wants to stay on board until spring 2023.

"The supervisory board of Apobank will deal with the early termination of the contract and the exact time of Holger Wessling's departure at its next meeting in early December," said the largest German cooperative bank on Tuesday.