If you only had one adjective to describe Cornelius Riese - the term "homeland" could fit well.

For the CEO of Frankfurt's DZ Bank, his activity is not just a job;

Rather, it seems as if the man has found a home in the cooperative association, whose central institute is DZ Bank.

"It's more of a destiny for me to work here," says Riese.

He likes the down-to-earth nature of the people who work at the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken and the companies in the DZ Bank Group, and he likes the long-term perspective that he can give priority to in his decisions over short-term, pleasant-sounding quarterly results.

"This environment has had a positive impact on me, I feel completely at ease."

Daniel Schleidt

Coordinator of the economics department in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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But the ties to home also apply in the literal sense: Riese, born in Heidelberg in 1975, is firmly rooted.

"Here I have my friends, here is our social infrastructure," says the father of three children.

He has found a second home in Frankfurt, he states explicitly.

The fact that he and his wife, as Riese says, "like the city very much", also has to do with the contrast to Heidelberg: the city is busy, less homogeneous, more international and more diverse than Heidelberg.

And this complexity suits Cornelius Riese.

Shared chairmanship

Because anyone who thinks that as a top banker, Riese is above all a man of figures, is way off the mark.

The quiet, tall manager is more: interested in many things, open to new things, as if he wanted to prove these qualities, he recently published a book in which he uses fictional short stories to deal with contemporary social issues, such as sustainability , self-optimization and digitization.

The end of the stories is deliberately left open to encourage the reader to reflect.

For him, the blank sheet of paper is relaxation and a challenge at the same time - and writing is a compensation for professional life.

Riese has shared the chairmanship of the DZ Bank board with Uwe Fröhlich since 2019.

One could think that this would come full circle, because at the age of 19 Riese ended up looking for a holiday job at the Heidelberger Volksbank rather by accident.

He had spent his youth on sports fields, wanted to study sports management or journalism, but then decided on business administration.

The desire to work in the financial sector in the future arose during my time at the management consultancy Accenture.

"I found that I enjoy abstract things."

He found his way into DZ Bank at the real estate subsidiary DG Hyp before moving to DZ Bank in 2009, where he became CFO and finally CEO in 2014.

As such, he presents himself as an analytically thinking, reserved manager who manages not only to philosophize about banks and finances in conversations, but also to address social issues - and to get involved in civil society.

Riese does this not only as the boss of a company, because he is convinced that decisions there should always have a social impact, but also personally, for example as a member of the executive committee of the Stifterverband or on the board of trustees of the Senckenberg Society.

In Frankfurt he likes the Alte Oper, but especially the Grüneburgpark.

But he prefers to indulge in his running hobby in Heidelberg.

This also shows that both places have become his home.