Allianz board member Jacqueline Hunt is leaving the board and will be “strategic advisor” to CEO Oliver Bäte until her contract expires in 2022. His successor is Andreas Wimmer, currently Head of Allianz Life Insurance.
Andreas Wimmer has a lightning-fast career. He has been at the helm of Allianz Lebensversicherung Stuttgart since 2020 – and is now appointed to the board of the parent company Allianz SE. There he will be responsible for global asset management and the subsidiary Allianz Life in the USA. Predecessor Jacqueline Hunt will be “strategic advisor” to CEO Oliver Bäte until she will leave the group in 2022 when her contract expires.
Wimmer’s successor at the helm of Allianz Leben will be Katja de la Viña, currently CFO of Allianz Germany, on January 1, 2022.
Hunt’s exit from the direct leadership role is apparently the result of a complex negotiation process. Because she was indirectly held responsible for a billion dollar disaster in the United States, but resisted it.
In addition to the investment giant Pimco, Hunt’s area of responsibility also includes the subsidiary Allianz Global Investors, which is being sued by US pension funds for around six billion dollars in damages. In the stock market crash in early 2020, it is said to have acted incorrectly with its structured alpha funds and broken its own investment guidelines. Particularly threatening for Allianz: the US Department of Justice has started investigations into the case, and the German financial regulator BaFin is also taking a close look.
But apparently the Allianz leadership failed to portray Hunt as the culprit for the disaster and to force their early withdrawal from the group. With the solution that has now been found, she will remain formally in the group until her contract expires. Whether she is actually given a lot of advice is another question.
The Supervisory Board of Allianz SE has also appointed Sirma Boshnakova, 49, a member of the Management Board with effect from January 1, 2022. She is currently the head of the subsidiary Allianz Partners and will succeed Sergio Balbinot, 63, whose contract expires at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Allianz has to face at least twelve lawsuits from investors in the dispute over billions in losses from its hedge funds in the corona crisis in the USA. A judge in the New York borough of Manhattan admitted the lawsuits – including two class actions – with a volume of four billion dollars.