Sparkasse fund company Deka binds Stocker’s crown prince

2023-09-15 14:07:02

In the investment company Deka, the course is being set for the long term: On Thursday, the board of directors, chaired by savings bank president Helmut Schleweis, who is leaving at the end of the year, extended the contracts of risk director Birgit Dietl-Benzin and finance and IT director Daniel Kapffer by five years each.

Dietl-Benzin moved from UBS to the Deka board in 2020 as Manuela Better’s successor. Back then, women on bank boards were still an absolute rarity. In the meantime, the risk department has almost developed into a female domain with Angeliki Krisilion (Investitionsbank Berlin), Kerstin Jöntgen (Investitionsbank des Landes Brandenburg), Sigrid Kozmiensky (ING Deutschland) and soon Tamara Weiss (Helaba).

Head of Risk: Birgit Dietl-Benzin : Image: Deka

Kapffer, on the other hand, is almost a primitive rock in the Deca. The qualified industrial engineer came from the management consultancy McKinsey in 2014 and has been on the Deka board since May 2019. Kapffer is four years younger than CEO Georg Stocker, who was born in 1964. Internally he is considered its crown prince. Only the cum-ex affair, which was thought to be over for a long time, but which led to a raid on Deka offices last year, has a negative impact on him. Otherwise, because of Kapffer, Deka is considered a leader in topics such as digital infrastructure (blockchain) and is economically successful.

Higher annual forecast

In August, the Deka board increased the annual forecast from “slightly over 500 million euros” to “more than 800 million euros”. In the first half of 2023, the savings bank securities house said it had already achieved an economic result of 633.6 million euros. In this respect, the annual forecast of “more than 800 million euros” still seems cautious, especially since a result of 985 million euros was achieved in 2022. Deka justified the cautious outlook by saying that burdens from additions to risk provisions were to be expected in the second half of the year. This is likely to also affect real estate financing.

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Although DekaBank is primarily active in the securities business, it also offers financing for commercial properties such as offices and hotels. According to the annual report, the preferred regions are Europe and North America. The prices for US office real estate in particular are currently in decline due to increased interest rates and the trend towards home offices. In the first six months of this year, Deka created around 2.4 million euros in risk provisions for real estate financing. The volume of real estate loans amounted to 8.7 billion euros at the end of June.