Manfred Meier-Preschany

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Manfred Meier-Preschany , only briefly called "MP" in the banking industry, (born January 21, 1929 in Zell im Wiesental ; † November 13, 2014 ) was a German bank manager and business consultant . From 1971 to 1984 he was a member of the Board of Management of Dresdner Bank .

Live and act

Meier-Preschany came from a family of officials. From 1948 to 1953 he studied economics with Walter Eucken and Edgar Salin in Freiburg and Basel . He also worked as a student trainee in Ernst Beyeler's gallery in Basel . In 1953 he was promoted to Dr. rer. pole. received his doctorate and joined the Rhein-Main-Bank in the same year , in whose branches Lörrach and Freiburg im Breisgau he was responsible for the lending business. In 1957, the Rhein-Main-Bank , together with other regional institutes, became Dresdner Bankmerged with headquarters in Frankfurt am Main .

In 1970 Meier-Preschany became the general representative of the institute in Frankfurt am Main and was promoted to deputy member of the board in June 1971. On January 1, 1973, the Board of Management under Jürgen Ponto appointed him a member of the Board of Management of Dresdner Bank , where he was given responsibility for risk management and the lending business in North and South America. At the time, he was the youngest board member of a major German bank. In addition to numerous functions in business, Meier-Preschany became a member of the supervisory board of AEG-Telefunken AG in 1977 .

After Jürgen Ponto's assassination in 1977, Meier-Preschany was one of the promising candidates for his successor, but the former Federal Minister of Economics Hans Friderichs, who had come from the FDP , was preferred to him. In 1984 Meier-Preschany resigned from the Board of Management because he considered his understanding of the role of the bank and its representation in foreign business to be incompatible with Friderichs' ideas.

After his departure, Meier-Preschany founded MP Consult in Frankfurt am Main and became its managing partner . In 1986 the company drew up an expert report to rescue the troubled holding company of the trade unions (BGAG). Meier-Preschany was then entrusted with the consolidation (“Don't say restructuring to me”), but this failed. In 1988 he was appointed honorary professor at the University of Karlsruhe , where he lectured on banking policy. From 1993 to 1998 Meier-Preschany was senior advisor to the Economic Cabinet of the Latvian government.

L'Homme qui marche I.

During Meier-Preschany's time on the Board of Management, a 31-storey high-rise was built between 1973 and 1978 as the new headquarters of Dresdner Bank in Frankfurt ( Silberturm ), at 166 meters the tallest bank building on the European continent. The art-loving Meier-Preschany was commissioned by the board with a sophisticated artistic design for the boardroom in the headquarters, which was inaugurated in 1978. In addition to important works by the Dresdner Brücke artists , by Max Beckmann , works by Bauhaus masters, as well as sculptures by Alexander Calder and Henry Moore , Meier-Preschany also had a sculptural work by Alberto Giacometti on the program, whose work he was part of Beyeler knew well.

The choice fell on Giacometti's life-size sculpture L'Homme qui marche I , which, made in six casts, was available at the Beyeler galleries in Basel and Sidney Janis in New York. Meier-Preschany accepted the American's only slightly cheaper offer and purchased the sculpture on January 11, 1980 in New York, with the support of the Frankfurt art dealer and former director of the Frankfurt art association Ewald Rathke , for the equivalent of around 1.4 million marks.

In February 2010, Commerzbank, from which Dresdner Bank was taken over in 2009, had the sculpture auctioned at a London auction house. It was sold to an anonymous bidder for £ 65 million (including buyer's premium ). The equivalent of around 75 million euros thus achieved exceeded expectations by far. Meyer-Preschany regretted the sale. Compared to the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , he said: "I would have preferred the" striding man "to have gone to a museum and thus present to the public."

Meier-Preschany lived and worked in Lossburg .

Publications

  • On the history of banking in Freiburg . Freiburg 1966.
  • Financing developing countries. A challenge for the industrialized countries . Mohr, Tübingen 1980, ISBN 3-16-343001-5 .
  • Against the common. Analyzes and diagnoses . Philo, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-8257-0117-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ death notice , boersen-zeitung.de, November 20, 2014.
  2. ↑ Concise formula: Dresdner Bank boss Hans Friderichs has lost a serious competitor - his colleague Meier-Preschany gave up . In Der Spiegel 8/1984 of February 20, 1985.
  3. ↑ Michael Hierholzer: Giacometti: Surprising return . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of February 10, 2010.
  4. ↑ Bank management regrets Giacometti auction . In: Tages-Anzeiger from February 10, 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Meier-Preschany, Manfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German banker; Member of the Board of Management of Dresdner Bank AG (1973–1978)
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Zell im Wiesental
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 2014