Surrounded by turmoil: Here the Stuttgart branch of Apobank
Image: Arnulf Hettrich / Fnoxx
Once again, a BCG management consultant influenced the selection of a board member. The supervisory board found out about this late. About trench warfare, orders, secret deals and possible conflicts of interest.
Since the Apotheker- und Ärztebank (Apobank) turned a large part of its customers against itself with a serious IT breakdown in the summer of 2020, Apobank has often seemed like a madhouse: since then, six members of the Management Board and one Chairman of the Supervisory Board have left or will say goodbye by mid-2023 take. One of the four new board members who have since been hired as a replacement is already gone. But even veterans who were initially kept in the board in times of thin staffing levels and then received the signal from the new chairman of the supervisory board, Karl-Georg Pochhammer, and the new chairman of the board, Matthias Schellenberg, that they no longer had a great future at Apobank run away. There is a lot of talk and rumours, accusations often whirl back and forth like poisoned darts, but nobody allows themselves to be quoted. It is not easy for outsiders to unravel who sprayed the poison, how reliable the allegations are and who should be hit by the arrows.
This much is clear: The renowned management consultancy Boston Consulting Group ( BCG ) with its long-standing senior partner Holger Sachse has played a central role in Apobank for years. The “Oskar” strategy project, for which Apobank paid millions under CEO Ulrich Sommer BCG, fueled further unrest before and after the IT breakdown and was not very successful. After CEO Sommer was de facto kicked out in December 2021, it was reported that Apobank had practically decided not to extend the mandate with BCG that expired at the end of 2021. But then BCG of all people brought Matthias Schellenberg into play as the new CEO of Apobank. BCG then received orders for the “Agenda 25” initiated by Schellenberg, which basically prioritizes strategic measures that have already been recognized as necessary – after initial approval by the entire board.