Manfred Knof and Bettina Orlopp fight for the top job

This is probably the question that concerns Knof himself the most. After all, CEOs in Germany usually have their contracts extended quickly after their first term, as long as they don't dismantle their own company. “It usually runs on autopilot,” says a long-time Commerzbank expert. But Knof has always been seen as an outsider by some at the bank.

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The reason for this: Knof worked for the insurance company Allianz for decades without a break. After leaving there, he did take a short job at Deutsche Bank. But to this day, they are happy to have gotten rid of Knof. And he probably first dealt with Commerzbank in more detail when he became its boss in January 2021. At the time, the institute was urgently looking for a successor to Martin Zielke, who had left in a dispute. The federal government, as the bank's largest shareholder, and the shareholder Cerberus, a US fund, had sacked Zielke because they felt his restructuring attempts were too timid.