The longtime boss Stefan Ermisch resigns surprisingly at the Hamburg Commercial Bank (HCOB). The 56-year-old will give up his post at the end of September, the former HSH Nordbank announced on Thursday. The supervisory board has complied with Ermisch’s request not to extend the contract, which runs until the end of 2023. “After ten years it’s enough at some point,” said Ermisch. Now is the right time to pass the baton on. CFO Ian Banwell is to become the new boss from October. The 58-year-old American has been a member of the board since April 2019. Before that, Banwell was a manager at financial investor Cerberus.
Ermisch became CFO of HSH in December 2012 and head of the institute in mid-2016. It was the first state bank to be privatized at the end of 2018 and went to financial investors Cerberus and JC Flowers for one billion euros. Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein had saved HSH Nordbank from going under in the shipping and financial crisis with billions in aid and had to sell it under pressure from the EU. With a massive job cuts, austerity and downsizing, Ermisch got the bank going again. At the beginning of 2022, the money house switched from the protection system of the savings bank finance group to the deposit protection fund of the private bank camp.
“I am very proud that we have shown together that even very large and complex restructuring processes are possible in the German banking sector,” emphasized Ermisch. “We wrote a piece of banking history together.” Juan Rodriguez Inciarte, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, explained that Ermisch’s achievements in the German banking sector were unparalleled. In his own words, future bank boss Banwell believes that HCOB will continue to achieve good results in a difficult market. “Our core profitability will continue to improve over the next few years.” The new chief financial officer is to be HCOB manager Marc Ziegner (46).