Who is Manfred Knof? Announced last weekend as the new chief executive of Commerzbank, he has already been noted for his ‘crowbar’ approach to negotiations. But is there more to the man?
Commerzbankers are still waiting for him to get his feet under the desk, but in the meantime a student organization in Germany has served up a feast of personal insights.
A 31-question interview with Knof by the EBS Symposium, a European student-run business conference, was uploaded to YouTube in August. And while ‘pithy’ seems an inadequate description of some of his answers (“How much will the economy change during this crisis?” “A lot.”), even the brevity is telling.
There’s no mucking around here. Three words to describe yourself? “Visionary, execution-driven and responsible.” Prefer working from home or the office? “Definitely from my office.”
I’m definitely not playing golf
Manfred Knof, Commerzbank
What’s he like to work with, and for? He does little to deny the impression of a man only remotely acquainted with the word ‘clubbable’. Colleagues say he is impatient, he admits. He says he’s not the best networker. “I’m definitely not playing golf.”
This is a man whose fondest memory of university days was a year spent studying abroad … in Geneva. He studied law, but if he had his time again, he would choose physics.
So far, so cautious. He likes complexity, particularly when combined with responsibility. What he loved most about running Deutsche Bank’s German private bank for the last year was “the richness of topics”, the fact that he ran everything – sales, products, operations, IT, human resources, finance and risk.
But his future staff will be glad to know that he claims not to micro-manage: he sets a vision and gives people “enough freedom to do their job”. With that freedom will come the responsibility to deliver, however. What sets him apart from other managers? “Execution and delivery”, he says. It’s a safe assumption that he ranks an ability to deliver pretty highly among his subordinates.
And if Commerzbank staff don’t already live in constant expectation of imminent change, they should now. Knof’s lesson from the Covid pandemic? “That we need to prepare for radical change and not be afraid of it.”
Balance
But is there another side? It seems there might be. His working day is eight to eight, which hints at a life of some balance. Some of that might come from the meditation and yoga routine at 5:30 every morning.
He is most proud of his happy and healthy family. His favourite place is his mountain cabin in Austria – it’s top of his list of post-Covid destinations, and not just for the Kaiserschmarrn he loves to eat. And to burn those off there’s all the hiking, biking, dog-walking and skiing.
A careful and rigorous professional with a home life that offers balance certainly looks like a good combination. There might even be a sense of humour lurking. He didn’t always want to be a banker, it turns out.
Dream job as a child? “James Bond.”
