Johannes Völling

Johannes Völling (born July 27, 1922 in Duisburg ; † November 26, 2002 in Düsseldorf) was a German bank manager and from 1978 to 1981 Chairman of the Board of WestLB .

Völling came from a Catholic family and graduated from high school in 1940 in his hometown of Duisburg. He then began to study law, but was drafted soon after and served as a Wehrmacht soldier. In 1945 he continued his studies in Cologne , received his doctorate in law there in 1949 and passed the second state examination in 1950.

Völling then initially went to Industriekreditbank AG in Düsseldorf , but switched to Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf in 1950 . In 1955 he was promoted to department head, joined the board of the Stadtsparkasse Bremerhaven in the same year and was then, from 1957 to 1965, on the board of the Stadtsparkasse Duisburg. In 1965 he went to the Rheinische Girozentrale and Provinzialbank, which in 1969 merged with the Landesbank von Westfalen to form the Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB). At WestLB, Völling held the post of deputy chairman of the board, making him the most powerful man in the company alongside Ludwig Poullain .

On December 23, 1977, Poullain had to leave the WestLB after a bribery affair. On January 23, 1978, the bank's board of directors named Völling as Poullain's successor. After the Poullain affair, WestLB initially remained in the public eye even under Völling due to scandals and negative headlines - for example, the bankruptcy of Beton- und Monierbau AG in 1979, as well as the bank's persistently poor economic data: the operating result almost halved within two years from 1978 to 1980 from 468 million to 260 million DM. For the business year 1980, the bank had to forego paying a dividend to its owners. This situation then led in July 1981 to Völling giving up another position on the board.

Völling was a member of the SPD , married and had no children.

Web links

• Literature by and about Johannes Völling in the catalog of the German National Library
• Johannes Völling in Munzinger