Status: December 6th, 2021 3:28 p.m.
According to media reports, Jörg Kukies will be head of the economic policy department in the Federal Chancellery. A successor for the outgoing Bundesbank President has not been named.
According to media reports, the designated Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has appointed Jörg Kukies as his economic advisor and head of the finance and economic policy department in the Chancellery. Kukies succeeds economist Lars-Hendrik Röller, who has headed the department since 2011.
The head of the finance and economic department advises the Federal Chancellor on important economic and financial policy issues and prepares talks and international meetings such as the G7 summit from an economic policy perspective. He is also the first point of contact for companies in the government and advises the Federal Chancellor, for example, on questions relating to the federal government’s participation in companies such as Telekom.
Personnel not undisputed
Kukies has been a civil servant State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance since 2018, where he is responsible for Europe and the financial market. Before he was appointed to the Federal Ministry by Scholz, the qualified economist worked for Goldman Sachs. There was plenty of criticism of the appointment from the ranks of the Greens and Leftists who did not consider the SPD man to be independent. Green finance politician Gerhard Schick said at the time: “The fact that a social democrat entrusts the responsibility for banking regulation to an investment banker shows the problems of the SPD.”
Kukies started working in product development at Goldman Sachs in London in 2001, where he was promoted to partner in 2010 and in 2011 took over the management of the German business with stocks, fixed-income securities and derivatives. At the end of the same year, Kukies and Wolfgang Fink became co-chairmen of Goldman Sachs Germany and Austria, succeeding Alexander Dibelius.
Important position still not filled
The position of the outgoing Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, however, has not yet been filled. “All things are well prepared and take a long time to prepare,” said Chancellor-designate Scholz at the presentation of the Social Democrats’ ministers. As far as the institutions are concerned, “that will of course not take place now before the government is formed,” but only when it is on the agenda. In the past week, speculation about Joachim Nagel as a possible successor had become louder. Previously there was also speculation about Kukies as a possible successor.
Weidmann had surprisingly announced his resignation at the end of the year after ten years at the helm of the German central bank and gave personal reasons for doing so. He is leaving the Bundesbank long before the end of the regular term of office that runs until 2027.