Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen (Helaba) is looking for a new member of the Board of Managing Directors for the Risk division. The 54-year-old incumbent Chief Risk Officer Detlef Hosemann will leave the central institution of the Hessian savings banks at the end of November 2023 when his contract expires in order to take on new professional challenges, Helaba announced on Friday. It was also heard among colleagues that Hosemann had taken the initiative to leave Helaba on his own initiative. As a result, Helaba has lost a member of the Board of Management who has been in office since 2009 and who stands for its cautious lending and conservative risk policy like no other.

Hanno Mußler

Editor in business.

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However, there are also indications that Hosemann's best time at the Landesbank could be over. At Helaba's last annual press conference in March, Hosemann was the only one of five ordinary members of the Board of Management to sit next to CEO Thomas Groß, but received significantly less speaking time than at previous press conferences in previous years. This may be due to the fact that Hosemann handed over the finance department to Groß with the change in CEO from Herbert Hans Grüntker to Groß in the summer of 2020 and took over the risk department from him. The separation of "finance" and "risk" on the board of directors has been prescribed by banking supervision for not so long ago.

Because of his dual role as Chairman of the Board of Management and Chief Financial Officer, Groß also presented the journalists with the financial figures to a large extent - in addition to the strategic projects that he is driving forward as CEO. Hosemann, on the other hand, had to comment on rather unpleasant topics: At the beginning of 2023, the ECB's European banking supervision imposed a fine of millions on Helaba for improper interference with its risk models during the Corona pandemic. In the mid-2020s, as with many other banks, the supervisory authority also found deficiencies in IT, for which Hosemann was responsible on the board until the summer of 2010.

Helaba's press spokesman, however, stressed on Friday that Hosemann's withdrawal from Helaba, which he joined in 2002 after stints at Deutsche Bank, Debis and KPMG, had nothing to do with the ECB's decisions on internal models, but was taking place on his own initiative. When asked whether Hosemann had been offered a contract extension, he did not answer.