Rolf Breuer shaped the financial center of Frankfurt and Deutsche Bank for years. One sentence cost him and his former employer dearly. He has now died at the age of 86.
Former Deutsche Bank CEO Rolf-Ernst Breuer has died. Breuer died on Wednesday at the age of 86, after a long illness, surrounded by his family, as Germany’s largest bank announced in Frankfurt on Thursday.
Breuer spent almost his entire professional life at Deutsche Bank. As CEO from May 1997 to May 2002, he pushed forward the internationalization of the group and – against some resistance – expanded the capital market business. The manager then headed the financial institution’s supervisory board for four years.
During his time as CEO, “Mr. Financial Center” made the Frankfurt-based institute one of the world’s leading financial groups. In 1999, Deutsche Bank celebrated the multi-billion dollar takeover of the US bank Bankers Trust. However, the planned merger with Dresdner Bank failed a year later shortly before completion.
Rolf Breuer’s term in office was not free from turbulence
The current Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Alexander Wynaendts, acknowledged that the Bankers Trust takeover had contributed significantly to “the fact that Deutsche Bank can now support its customers worldwide in all financial matters and has the global network and expertise necessary to do so.” In Rolf-Ernst Breuer, Deutsche Bank is losing “one of its most influential personalities.”
Breuer’s successor Josef Ackermann told the “Bild” newspaper: “Deutsche Bank has a lot to thank Rolf Breuer for.” He will be remembered as a person “who you could always rely on,” said Ackermann. “Whenever there was bad press, he said: Mr. Ackermann, take heart, your obituary will one day be much friendlier.”
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Breuer’s term in office was not free of turbulence either. There were only a few sentences that he spoke into a reporter’s microphone as head of Deutsche Bank at the beginning of 2002. Breuer questioned Leo Kirch’s creditworthiness in the short conversation with Bloomberg TV, which was published on February 4, 2002. The sentence cost him and his former employer dearly. Kirch’s media group went under shortly afterwards. Throughout his life, Kirch blamed Breuer and Deutsche Bank for this. It was only years later that the bank and the Kirch heirs agreed on a settlement worth three-digit millions.
Source: Stern
