Frank Appel is a sought-after man, you have to give him that. But when is a person to be asked when every day only has 24 hours for them? This question will get new meaning before the upcoming Supervisory Board meetings of Deutsche Post and Deutsche Telekom. Because on this Wednesday, the control committee of the Post wants to decide whether Appel should remain CEO of the logistics group beyond October 2022. The 60-year-old always said that he enjoyed his work. But as early as April Appel could become chairman of the Telekom supervisory board. The post boss is considered the hottest candidate to succeed 75-year-old Ulrich Lehner, whose term of office will end.
But this potential wealth of tasks is already meeting with criticism. “We take a critical view of the duplication of offices,” says Ingo Speich, an expert in good corporate governance at Deka Investment. “A chairman of the board of directors should not take over the chairmanship of the supervisory board of another group at the same time.” Deka is one of the ten largest shareholders in both Post and Telekom. The fund company of the savings banks holds shares in both Dax groups worth hundreds of millions of euros.
Vanda Rothacker, an expert on good corporate governance at Union Investment, also counts the mandates: Appel is the head of the Post and a member of the supervisory board of the medical technology group Fresenius, now the chair of the Telekom supervisory board could be added. “That would be a clear case of an accumulation of offices,” says Rothacker. Union Investment is one of the 20 largest shareholders in Post and Telekom. The fund company of the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken counts top positions on executive and supervisory boards twice, so Appel would have five mandates with Telekom. In order for Union Investment to approve such personal details, an incumbent Dax boss may have a maximum of three mandates.
Supervisory board members should have enough time for their work
Background of the criticism: Business management experts insist that board members have enough time to really control the board of directors of a corporation. This is especially true for the chief supervisor of an international corporation like Telekom. In recent years, shareholder representatives have criticized more and more general meetings of large companies for the fact that individual supervisory board members have too many offices.
Neither Post nor Telekom wanted to comment on the investors’ warnings on Tuesday. Appel has not yet been officially nominated as the future chief controller of Telekom, it is said in Bonn. The Group’s supervisory board wants to meet next Wednesday.
In favor of Appel’s candidacy, however, is the fact that he has experience with state holdings: The federal government is the largest shareholder in both Post and Telekom. In addition, some of the two groups operate on regulated markets, such as the mail market. Appel’s predecessor, Klaus Zumwinkel, was also the post manager and telecom chief supervisor at the same time; that was of course 13 years ago. After all, nothing has changed in terms of physical proximity over the years: the Post and Telecom headquarters in Bonn are only one kilometer apart.