Dhe state development bank KfW has found a new boss for its subsidiary Ipexbank. Belgin Rudack will be appointed to the bank’s management board on January 1, 2023 and will take over as chairman of the management board on March 31, 2023 after Klaus Michalak leaves. A spokesman for KfW confirmed the corresponding information from the FAZ on request.
Born in 1967, Rudack comes from Creditplus Bank AG, a Stuttgart subsidiary of the French Crédit Agricole Group, which specializes in sales and trade finance. She has been CEO there since 2017. With total assets of 6.6 billion euros, the bank is significantly smaller than Ipexbank, which moves almost 30 billion euros.
In the context of KfW, it is emphasized that Rudack Creditplus has realigned and introduced new sales structures. Before that, the business graduate held various management positions in several international commercial banks, including the PlanetHome Group, the Santander Consumer Bank, the GE Capital Group and the Citigroup. Michalak, who turned 65 in July, can now retire as planned.
Embarrassing large loan to Wirecard
Within the state development bank, Ipexbank is responsible for export and project financing. A major loan to the Wirecard scandal group, which the state bank had secured much worse than its private competitors, had recently caused a stir. After the collapse of the payment service provider, only a fraction of the original EUR 100 million loan remained.
Michalak, who was appointed to the head of Ipexbank from Deutsche Bank in 2014, therefore had to answer questions in the Bundestag committee of inquiry. However, public prosecutors’ investigations against those responsible within Ipexbank on suspicion of breach of trust were discontinued this July.
The bank’s very large portfolio of cruise ships, which have gotten into difficult waters since the beginning of the corona crisis, is also tricky. Ipexbank has regularly given large shipping companies loans if they had their cruise ships built in German shipyards in order to secure jobs there.
As early as April, the bank had also warned of the negative consequences that the Ukraine war could have on its own business. In the first half of the year, the bank committed new financing of 6 billion euros, which was below the weak level of the previous year due to the corona pandemic. For comparison: In 2019 as a whole, i.e. before the outbreak of the pandemic, it provided financing of 22 billion euros. So Rudack will first have to lead the bank through a crisis.
