Frank Appel, 60, has been on the board of Deutsche Post DHL for almost 20 years and has been CEO since 2008. Nobody has been at the top of a Dax group for as long as he is. And the Hamburg-born and former McKinsey consultant does not seem to be tired of office. Most recently, Appel emphasized again and again that the job was a lot of fun for him. So it is possible that he will extend his chief contract again.
At the same time, Appel is now also being traded for another top job. According to insiders, he is a favorite for the post of Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Deutsche Telekom. There has long been a search for a successor for Ulrich Lehner, 75, who has headed the committee for almost 14 years and will retire next year due to age. A preliminary decision should be made in mid-December. Deutsche Post and Deutsche Telekom made no comment on Sunday that Handelsblatt was the first to report.
The post boss as a supervisor at Telekom, so in powerful positions at both former Bonn state-owned companies? This personality certainly raises questions, such as: Can these jobs even be created in personal union? On the one hand, there is a physical proximity, the headquarters of the two Dax companies are only a few hundred meters apart in Bonn. On the other hand, it would be conceivable that Appel would not extend his job as post manager for another five years, as is often the case, but receive a contract with a shorter term so that he could later take care of Telekom more intensively. Appel’s predecessor as the Post boss, Klaus Zumwinkel, had worked for both jobs together for a while.
Appel is familiar with the federal government as a major shareholder
Those involved emphasize that Appel is well suited for the supervisory job. On the one hand, he is familiar with former state-owned companies, post and telecom once emerged from the Federal Post Office and were then listed on the stock exchange one after the other. The federal government still has a direct and indirect stake in the two groups, with a good 20 percent in Post and over 30 percent in Telekom. So Appel knows a lot about this major shareholder. The Monopolies Commission, which advises the federal government on competition issues, recently called for the federal holdings to be sold. The two packages are worth a double-digit billion amount on the stock exchange.
It is also pointed out that Appel has successfully digitized Swiss Post and is also familiar with corporations that are regulated. Both Post and Telekom, as former monopoly companies, are under special observation and must meet certain requirements. Appel enjoys the trust of both the federal government and the capital market. During the pandemic, the Post recently benefited from the parcel boom, and the share rose significantly.
Lehner is leaving at the next Telekom general meeting in early April 2022, then Appel could be elected to the supervisory board and then chairman of the body. In the meantime, the former BMW driver Harald Krüger was considered a candidate, but apparently he has canceled. The former head of the reinsurer Munich Re, Nikolaus von Bomhard, heads the Post’s Supervisory Board.