Germany’s oldest bank taps deal makers for wealth management

Bloomberg

Germany’s oldest lender is lender trying some new ideas. Hamburg-based Joh Berenberg Gossler & Company KG will abandon its dual-leadership structure in German wealth management, the unit’s new sole head Dirk Wehmhoener told Bloomberg in an interview. In order to increase assets under management, he intends to interlink wealth management more closely with investment banking. Acquisitions, however, are not on his mind.
Wehmhoener’s former co-head Angela Mueller-Valkyser, who joined from Deutsche Bank AG at the beginning of 2018, recently left the company for personal reasons. Last year, her predecessor Oliver Holtz had also departed from the bank founded in 1590.
“Our goal is to grow stronger than the overall market in German wealth management,” Wehmhoener said. A better cooperation with the lender’s in-house investment bankers could help to reach this target, he added. “If there is a cash event at the end of a transaction, then our wealth management colleagues should be involved.” If, for example, a family sells its company, then it will ideally invest the proceeds directly with Berenberg.
Wehmhoener does not think much of increasing assets under management through acquisitions. “We have always grown organically and have had good experiences with that,” he said. In many acquisitions, there is a strong fluctuation both on the advisor side and on the customers’ side, Wehmhoener said.