(Bloomberg) -- Bettina Orlopp has been waiting in the wings for more than four years. With Commerzbank AG scrambling to fend off an unwelcome suitor, her rise to the top has taken a sudden and dramatic twist.
The lender’s supervisory board on Tuesday appointed Orlopp as the next chief executive officer, the first woman ever in that role. The announcement came barely two weeks after CEO Manfred Knof said he wouldn’t seek a new term when his current one runs out at the end of next year.
That timeplan was thrown into disarray within hours of being announced, as Italian rival UniCredit SpA took a major stake in the German lender and said it was considering a takeover. Orlopp, Commerzbank’s chief financial officer, now finds herself with the task of leading the 154-year-old company through one of its biggest challenges, with its future as an independent firm at stake.
A former partner at McKinsey & Co., Orlopp has been preparing for the job since at least 2020, when former CEO Martin Zielke was forced out in a shareholder revolt. But the mother of two, who had assumed the CFO role only months earlier, was passed over for Knof, an outsider hired from Deutsche Bank AG.
Over the past years, she became the public face of Commerzbank, presenting quarterly results and investor updates, and building relations with stakeholders. Headhunters kept raising her name whenever there was a high-profile role to fill in Germany’s financial industry. Orlopp stuck with Commerzbank, patiently waiting for her turn.
She’s a “loyal soul,” the 54-year-old said earlier this month when asked about her ambitions, just before Knof announced his decision to leave.
Orlopp started at Commerzbank in 2014 as an executive responsible for group development and strategy. Three years later she became the first woman on the bank’s management board, initially in charge of compliance, human resources and legal matters. She helped improve Commerzbank’s control systems and later spearheaded a cost-cutting program.
During her early days in the CFO role, she sometimes appeared a little unsteady during investor presentations, though she has since won praise from investors, customers and employees for her clear communication and management of the bank’s finances.
It’s a skill she’ll need in her new job as she leads discussions with UniCredit. The Italian lender, run by veteran dealmaker Andrea Orcel, effectively controls 21% of Commerzbank. That makes it the biggest shareholder, ahead of the German government, which opposes a potential takeover.
Orcel has made clear that he’s got ideas for improving Commerzbank’s performance that he plans to present to the lender’s management. He’s also said he may ultimately launch a takeover bid for Commerzbank.
Knof will step aside from his role in a matter of weeks or even days, Bloomberg News reported. It will then be up to Orlopp, who wrote her dissertation on cash settlements for minority shareholders, to ensure Commerzbank can remain independent. She has already said that she’s not excited by the idea of a takeover.
“Issues like this cause unrest,” she said last week. “We don’t need them because we are on an excellent path.”
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