Jörg Asmussen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jörg Asmussen in March 2012

Jörg Asmussen (born October 31, 1966 in Flensburg ) is a German economist and member of the SPD .

Offices

Federal Finance Minister Hans Eichel made him Ministerial Director in 2003 . During the grand coalition from 2005 to 2009, he supported deregulation in the financial sector. As a member of the board, including in the IKB German industrial bank , he sat open for the purchase of US mortgage loans and increasing trade with asset-backed securities (English asset-backed securities , abbreviation ABS) one. These forms of exchange trading led IKB into the crisis and are considered to be the trigger for the financial crisis from 2007 .

In his capacity as department head and later state secretary, Asmussen was a member of the supervisory boards of IKB and of the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), i.e. two banks, and also chairman of the board of directors of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), an organization that prohibits banks from risky trading in securities should. This led to the accusation of many critics that Asmussen sat on supervisory bodies that controlled his own businesses.

On July 1, 2008 Jörg Asmussen became a permanent state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance . On January 1, 2012, he began his eight-year term as a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank . His successor in the Ministry of Finance is Thomas Steffen . After almost two years, he moved to the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in the Merkel III cabinet as a permanent state secretary at the request of Andrea Nahles . Until the end of 2015 he was responsible for issues relating to old-age pensions. At the beginning of 2016, this office was taken over by the former general secretary of the SPD, Yasmin Fahimi . Asmussen has been in temporary retirement since then.

In March 2016, it was announced that Asmussen would become a member of the supervisory board of the British peer-to-peer credit platform Funding Circle , which was founded in 2010 .

From September 1, 2016, Asmussen worked for the investment bank Lazard , where he advises governments and the public sector as well as large companies in Europe. In July 2018 he was appointed Head of Mergers and Acquisitions for Europe at the bank.

He has been working for the Association of the German Insurance Industry since April 2020 .

Life

After graduating from the Goethe School in Flensburg , Asmussen studied economics in Gießen and Bonn (among others with the professor for international economics Axel A. Weber ) and also acquired an MBA at the Luigi Bocconi University of Economics in Milan .

In 1996 he began his career in the Federal Ministry of Finance under the then Finance Minister Theo Waigel as a consultant for international finance and currency policy. When Oskar Lafontaine took over the Ministry of Finance after the change of government in 1998 , he became personal assistant to the new State Secretary Heiner Flassbeck . Asmussen's competence was assessed by Flassbeck as "mediocre" and Asmussen was not recommended for high tasks. After Oskar Lafontaine's resignation, the new minister Hans Eichel made him head of his ministerial office. After a short time as a sub-department head in the European department, Asmussen took over the management of the department for national and international financial market and currency policy on March 1, 2003.

Asmussen convinced Eichel of the idea of making his former teacher Axel Weber the new President of the Deutsche Bundesbank as the successor to Ernst Welteke , who resigned in April 2004 . Two years earlier it had also been Asmussen's idea to appoint Weber to the federal government's group of five economic practices .

In the 2005 coalition agreement (CDU / CSU / SPD) , Asmussen advocated the removal of "superfluous regulations" and the "expansion of the securitization market" for the financial market.

During his time as department head, Asmussen sat as a representative of the federal government on the supervisory board of the Mittelstandsbank IKB , which got into difficulties in the summer of 2007 as a result of the crisis in the US subprime market and the state-owned development bank KfW had to provide billions to rescue it . At the time, Asmussen was strongly committed to buying the papers that later triggered the IKB's crisis.

As a representative of the Ministry of Finance, he also sat on the administrative board of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). On behalf of the ministry, Asmussen was a member of the shareholders' council of the finance lobby organization True Sale International GmbH (TSI), which is committed to expanding the German securitization market through asset-backed securities (ABS). Problems with these asset-backed securities are believed to be a major contributor to the 2007 financial crisis . In 2013 he told the "Zeit" that the controversial article published under his name was written by other officials of the ministry.

On 1 July 2008 he was appointed civil servant State Secretary appointed and replaced Thomas Mirow from. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) kept Asmussen in office and left him with responsibility for politics towards Greece during its financial crisis .

Jörg Asmussen sat on the steering committee of the SoFFin bank rescue fund , on the board of directors of the financial supervisory authority BaFin and in the “ Economic Fund Germany ”, which decides on government guarantees for companies without parliamentary control . He was also one of six members of the “New Financial Market Architecture” expert group. This body should draft proposals for new financial market rules ( financial market regulations ) which, among other things, aim to increase market transparency .

On September 10, 2011, Federal Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble announced after the resignation of the previous chief economist of the European Central Bank Jürgen Stark that the federal government would advocate the filling of the post with Jörg Asmussen. The official appointment to the Executive Board of the ECB took place on October 23, 2011 by the European Council in Brussels. Contrary to the original planning and the wishes of the federal government, Peter Praet took over the position of ECB chief economist, the board of directors decided that Asmussen will keep the international affairs department.

In August 2012, Asmussen took a different position than Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann : The new program for purchasing government bonds is compatible with the mandate of the ECB. “We are acting within our mandate, which is primarily geared towards guaranteeing price stability in the medium term for the entire euro area . Only a currency that is beyond doubt can be stable. ”This ECB policy is controversial in connection with the no bailout clause . In June 2013 Asmussen defended the OMT bond purchase program before the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.

Mandates in supervisory boards

Jörg Asmussen was - mostly due to his functions in the Federal Ministry of Finance - and is a member of various supervisory boards:

Private

Asmussen's partner until 2016 was Henriette Peucker , who headed the Berlin representative office of Deutsche Börse from January 2003 to March 2010 . Since April 2010 she has been employed by a communications consultancy. Because of this relationship, he was charged with possible conflicts of interest and bias. Asmussen is the father of two daughters.

criticism

Jörg Asmussen drew criticism as one of the leading finance managers in Germany. She began with the suspicion of a conflict of interest because as a financial politician he holds supervisory and control functions that also include stock exchange trading, but his wife was in the management of Deutsche Börse . She has since given up this activity.

The bigger problem area was Asmussen's various functions as decision-makers. As head of BaFin, for example, he was appointed by the government to control the free financial market and put it in check, but was himself a member of the supervisory board of a bank (IKB). He also worked in an advisory capacity for financial institutions (TSI). When the IKB got into insolvency wrongly advised, the federally owned KfW stepped in. Asmussen also sat on their supervisory board.

As an advocate of deregulating the financial markets and buying ABS and financial derivatives, Asmussen was a child of the pre-2007 financial boom. When the crisis began with the collapse of several banks, it was precisely these highly complex or risky securities that were identified as the cause of the crash. It is therefore incomprehensible to critics why Asmussen was appointed to the Executive Board of the ECB and is now supposed to manage the crisis from a high point of view, which he himself conjured up. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung calls him "too clever to deny your own mistakes".

Web links

Commons : Jörg Asmussen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Asmussen was also a co-founder of True Sale International GmbH (TSI) and a member of the supervisory board of the federally owned credit institution for reconstruction
  2. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 17, 2010: Asmussens role play and TAZ of September 11, 2011: A neoliberal comrade .
  3. ↑ EU press release of October 23, 2011
  4. ↑ Message on dowjones.de ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated January 2, 2012, accessed January 3, 2012  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dowjones.de
  5. ↑ ECB Director: Nahles brings Asmussen in as State Secretary . In: Spiegel Online from December 15, 2013.
  6. ↑ Draghi's best man . FAZ.net (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), accessed on December 16, 2013.
  7. ↑ Asmussen is probably not going to KfW - Tagesspiegel of December 17, 2015:
  8. ↑ Asmussen becomes supervisory board member at Funding Circle . In: Politics & Communication, March 11, 2016
  9. ↑ Former central banker Asmussen hires at investment bank at faz.net, July 7, 2016
  10. ↑ Lazard entrusts Jörg Asmussen with a new function. Retrieved March 13, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Asmussen will succeed Fürstenwerth as managing director of the GDV. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  12. ↑ a b c Jens Berger: Shadow man under fire - State Secretary Jörg Asmussen has to answer uncomfortable questions in front of the HRE investigation committee . heise.de . June 29, 2009. Retrieved January 23, 2011.
  13. ^ Christoph Schwennicke: State Secretary Asmussen - Ikarus in Not . In: Spiegel Online , June 15, 2009, accessed January 23, 2011
  14. ^ YouTube , Plusminus , May 18, 2010
  15. ↑ Peter Gauweiler: If you save, you end up with nothing . FAZ from March 16, 2010. Retrieved July 16, 2013. [1]
  16. ↑ Albrecht Müller : Further hard evidence for the involvement of the Federal Ministry of Finance in casino operations at our expense . Thought pages . April 7, 2008. Retrieved January 23, 2011.
  17. ↑ Mark Schieritz: Jörg Asmussen: "Fun is private" . In: The time . No. 39/2013 ( online ).
  18. ↑ Portrait: Jörg Asmussen , Manfred Schäfers, FAZ from April 13, 2010
  19. ^ Matthias Sobolewski, Andreas Möser: Government appoints expert group on financial market reform . Reuters . October 28, 2008. Retrieved January 23, 2011.
  20. ↑ Germany has decided - Asmussen should join the ECB . n-tv .de. September 10, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
  21. ↑ Belgian Peter Praet becomes the new chief economist of the ECB. Retrieved January 3, 2012 .
  22. ↑ Asmussen does not become the chief economist of the ECB and receives the international affairs department. Retrieved January 3, 2012 .
  23. ↑ Interview (August 20, 2012) in the Frankfurter Rundschau : [2] , spiegel.de: [3]
  24. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / cep.eu
  25. ↑ Introductory statement by the ECB in the proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court. In: ECB . Retrieved December 11, 2018 .
  26. ↑ Asmussen's love failed despite giving up top jobs . In: Welt Online . July 10, 2016 ( welt.de [accessed July 11, 2016]).
  27. ↑ Peucker represents Hering Schuppener in Berlin . Politics & Communication . March 16, 2010. Retrieved on April 5, 2013.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.politik-kommunikation.de  
  28. ↑ Jörg Asmussen - manager with civil servant status . Archived from the original on October 6, 2011. Retrieved October 29, 2011.
  29. ↑ Asmussen caught up in financial supervision . Financial Times Germany . June 13, 2009. Archived from the original on January 1, 2010. Retrieved on January 23, 2011.
  30. ↑ Portrait: Jörg Asmussen , FAZ from April 13, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Asmussen, Jörg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD)
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Flensburg