At first, I assumed that the senior investment banker I was meeting for lunch at his posh private members club in Mayfair was joking. “There are no chief executives in Germany,” the specialist in merger and acquisitions advisory quipped.
I wondered if he was referring to the fact that the current crop of German CEOs tends to be more humble and less buccaneering than earlier generations of corporate leaders. Towering figures such as Volkswagen’s Martin Winterkorn, Deutsche Bank’s Anshu Jain and Daimler’s Jürgen Schrempp were often larger-than-life characters who defined the whole culture of their corporate empire, and not necessarily in a good way.
But my lunch date really meant it. “I’m dead serious,” he said, “German CEOs are not real chief executives and that’s a real problem for the German corporate sector.” The banker then embarked on an extensive lament on the sorry state of German blue-chips, with many members of the Dax 40 embroiled in corporate crisis, and management being unable to adjust swiftly disruptive change.