Thomas Mirow

Thomas Mirow (born January 6, 1953 in Paris ) is a German politician ( SPD ). From 1991 to 2001 he was Senator with various responsibilities in Hamburg , from 2005 to 2008 State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance , from 2008 to 2012 President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and from 2013 to 2018 Chairman of the Supervisory Board of HSH Nordbank .

Life and work

Mirow grew up bilingually as the son of the diplomat Eduard Mirow and passed the Abitur in 1970 in Bonn . He then completed a degree in political science , sociology and Romance studies at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . There he received his doctorate in 1975 with the thesis "De Gaulle's European political conceptions and their significance for France's position in the Fifth Republic" .

In 1975 Mirow became an assistant in the office of the then federal chairman of the SPD, Willy Brandt . He later worked there as a speaker and finally took over the management of the office. In 1983 he moved to Hamburg at the request of Mayor Klaus von Dohnanyi , where he was director of the state press office until 1987. Then Mirow worked as an independent political and business consultant until 1991 . After his temporary retirement from active politics, he worked from 2002 to 2005 as a consultant to Ernst & Young AG and the private bank MMWarburg & CO as well as managing director of Alstertor Schienenlogistik Beteiligungs GmbH.

Mirow has been married to journalist Barbara Mirow since 1979, who has been program director at NDR Kultur since 2003 , and has two daughters. In December 2006, an arson attack was carried out in front of Mirow's private house in Hamburg, in which no one was injured. The letter of confession that was subsequently published was critical of globalization and was directed against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in 2007 .

Political party

Mirow joined the SPD in 1971. For the election campaign for the Hamburg mayor elections in 1991 , Mirow became a member of the leading campaign team at the instigation of First Mayor Henning Voscherau .

In October 2003, the Hamburg regional association of the SPD nominated him as a top candidate for the early general election on February 29, 2004 . Mirow was considered an expert in state politics, but he could not prevail against the incumbent Ole von Beust ( CDU ), who achieved an absolute majority for the CDU in this election.

Public offices

After the SPD was able to achieve an absolute majority in the 1991 general election, Mirow was elected Senator and Head of the Senate Chancellery on June 26, 1991. After the early citizenship election in 1993, which had become necessary, the SPD formed a coalition with the then STATT party and Mirow was elected senator and head of the urban development authority and the senate office for district affairs on December 15, 1993. He also remained head of the Senate Chancellery. As an urban development senator, Mirow was involved in pacifying the conflict over Hafenstrasse . In the following election in 1997, the SPD suffered heavy losses. Thereupon the previous First Mayor Henning Voscherau resigned and a red-green coalition was formed . In the Senate headed by Voscherau's successor Ortwin Runde from November 12, 1997, Mirow was then senator and head of the economic authority. During his tenure, he pushed through the expansion of the Hamburg Airbus site so that the planned large Airbus A380 could be built there. After the red-green coalition had lost its majority in the 2001 general election, Mirow left office on October 31, 2001.

In April 2004 Mirow was sent as a representative of Germany to the “High Level Group” of the EU Commission to evaluate the “ Lisbon Strategy ”, chaired by the former Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok . It was supposed to review the implementation of the strategy to improve the economic competitiveness of the EU states and presented its report in November 2004.

From March to November 2005, Mirow was head of the department for economic, financial and labor market policy in the Federal Chancellery and personal representative of the Federal Chancellor for the Lisbon Process and thus the closest economic policy advisor to Gerhard Schröder . After the 2005 Bundestag elections , he moved to the Merkel I cabinet as State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance headed by Peer Steinbrück , where he was responsible for European policy as well as for financial market and currency policy until June 2008.

In July 2008 he became President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development . Mirow held the office until July 2012. His predecessor in this post was Jean Lemierre and his successor Suma Chakrabarti .

On February 28, 2013 Mirow - after Hilmar Kopper's resignation - was elected Chairman of the Supervisory Board of HSH Nordbank. Since the beginning of 2013, Mirow has been a member of the Global Advisory Board of the Rothschild Group , a board member of NH JSC Baiterek (Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan) and a member of the shareholders' committee of the shipping company F. Laeisz . The Hertie School of Governance and the Institute for the World Economy (Kiel) also appointed him as Senior Fellow and Fellow at Large in October 2012 .

Since December 2018, Mirow has been Chairman of the Board of the German National Foundation .