This is seen, almost certainly correctly, as a move to Anglo-Saxon methods of managing finance capital.
It is a switch from the collegiate stability of German banks and their interconnected holdings in German industry, to a much more mobile response to the demands of finance capital. It also implies that there is sufficient data to monitor activity to provide security and stability without a slowly moving larger consensual board of management. Finance capital is becoming even more technical, abstract and impersonal, despite the enormous figure that the CEO will presumably earn.
This move is also a sign of the shake-up that is going to occur in German capital as it takes advantage of the emergence of euroland and the legal change by the SPD-Green government allowing banks to benefit from freeing up their cross holdings in industry. The latest capitalist revolution has begun.
Chris Burford
London