"Why Walter?" asked even senior staff at Dresdner Bank when Bernhard Walter was designated as the bank's next chief executive. From outside German banking came a simpler query: "Who is Walter?" So far, Walter has made no attempt to shed light on either mystery.
Long before he succeeds Jurgen Sarrazin next May, Walter is already tainted as a compromise candidate. Ask any senior German banker, inside or outside Dresdner, and you'll hear a different explanation for the surprise election of Walter by Dresdner's supervisory board. No one saw him as the obvious choice: Heinz-Jörg Platzek, Ernst-Moritz Lipp, Gerhard Eberstadt, Horst Müller and Gerd Häusler were all believed to have a stronger claim.
Yet more than any of these erstwhile rivals, Walter can be seen as a successful combination of commercial banker and investment banker. As head of corporate and international banking he has built up Dresdner's east European business, the area where the German bank co-operates most effectively with its French partner Banque Nationale de Paris. As head of global finance, he has a seat on the management board of Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. This dual identity could enable him to reconcile the two parts of the Dresdner group before they diverge any further.
Another possible reason for the choice of Walter could be that his tax affairs are transparent. After both the chairman and a board member of Dresdner were forced to resign over allegations of tax evasion, those who win appointments now need to be above reproach. One ex-Dresdner banker claims to know that the tax issue clinched the final appointment of Walter as chief executive.
Although Walter's promotion remains a puzzle, that is the essence of the man. After 35 years in the service of Dresdner Bank, he remains so private that several senior managers of the Dresdner group say they have no real idea of his personality, his working style or what his goals for the bank will be once he becomes its leader.
As for those who venture an opinion, their views differ widely. While competitors call him cold and supercilious one who admits no personal dislike of the man describes him as "proud, pushy and somewhat arrogant" Dresdner insiders swear that he is benevolent and considerate: "the one board member you can go to if you have a problem," says one staffer. "A thoroughly decent man," says a former senior colleague.
Walter, 55, is essentially a commercial banker. From Freiberg, a provincial town in south-west Germany, he joined Dresdner as a school-leaver in the early 1960s and has been there ever since. His command of English is limited and like Deutsche Bank's Rolf Breuer he has never lived outside Germany.
Although some Dresdner Kleinwort Benson corporate financiers deride global finance as "not true investment banking", Walter clearly sees himself as one of the board's investment bankers. Now that Eberstadt has been ejected from the chairmanship of Dresdner Kleinwort Benson some insiders say there is a strong personal rivalry between the two Walter is one of just three board members overseeing the investment bank.
As the ultimate head of Dresdner Kleinwort Benson's global-finance division including project finance, structured finance and syndicated lending Walter leaves most of the deal-making to his right-hand man, Bernd Fahrholz. Walter's patronage enabled Fahrholz to win joint-command of the global finance division in tandem with Kleinwort's man, John Cameron.
Yet one client's loyalty to Dresdner Kleinwort Benson is attributed entirely to Walter's efforts. He takes the credit for winning Gazprom, the giant Russian utility which has issued two billion-dollar syndicated loans this year, with Dresdner Kleinwort Benson as arranger.
Reaching the pinnacle of his profession appears to have provided the final boost Walter needed to achieve a long-term private ambition. After years of waiting, he has recently been admitted to the exclusive golf club at Kronberg, where ex-Bundesbank president Karl-Otto Pöhl plays along with a clutch of other eminent bankers including Martin Kohlhaussen of Commerzbank and Carl von Boehm-Bezing of Deutsche Bank. Yet his handicap of 36 the maximum which most good clubs allow their members to use suggests that Walter has been spending too little time on the greens and fairways. Fellow golfers are watching to see whether his promotion will offer any more opportunity to snatch an afternoon on the course. Laura Covill