Erdle to take over responsibility for Corporate Customers from Lochner

After 12 years as the head of corporate customers business, Karl Manfred Lochner will step down as a member of the LBBW Board of Managing Directors at the end of the year. He has headed up the key business area since 2012 and played a significant role in shaping the LBBW Group’s successful growth trajectory. In January 2024 he will be succeeded by Joachim Erdle, currently the director of Corporate Finance.

Stuttgart. Early succession planning for the LBBW Board of Managing Directors team: After many years as Board Member for Corporate Customers, Karl Manfred Lochner (61) will resign from his position on the Board of Managing Directors as of 31 December 2023 to focus on various supervisory board positions at well-known companies and on his personal interests. He will be succeeded by Joachim Erdle (55), currently the director of Corporate Finance. The bank’s Supervisory Board resolved the personnel changes at today’s meeting, subject to regulatory approval.

“Karl Manfred Lochner is a highly esteemed and experienced banker who has played a significant role in the company’s success. On behalf of the Supervisory Board, I would like to thank him for his valuable contribution and exceptional work for the benefit of LBBW,” said the Chairman of LBBW’s Supervisory Board, Christian Brand. In Brand’s view, finding an internal successor for the key Board of Managing Directors position is also evidence of LBBW’s successful business performance in recent years. “I am delighted that we were able to appoint Joachim Erdle, a proven expert and top executive with real entrepreneurial drive, from within the bank.”

Karl Manfred Lochner has been a member of the LBBW Board of Managing Directors since 2012. As early as 2013, he led the bank’s corporate customer business on a path of systematic growth and then significantly expanded its market position in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

“After an impressive 45-year career, we respect Charly Lochner’s desire to have more time for his personal interests. We are losing an esteemed colleague and outstanding banker who always put the interests of our corporate customers at the heart of everything he did. The entire Board of Managing Directors team wishes him all the best and thanks him for his great commitment to LBBW,” said Rainer Neske, Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors of LBBW.

Joachim Erdle will take up his position on the LBBW Board of Managing Directors on 1 January 2024. Appointing him around six months before Lochner’s departure ensures sufficient time for a smooth handover and in-depth onboarding. Erdle has 30 years of experience in banking and is very familiar with the bank’s corporate customer business, which he has expanded over the last 12 years in close collaboration with Lochner. He is responsible for areas including Schuldschein business, where LBBW has been the undisputed market leader for many years, and syndicated financing, where LBBW is now number two in Germany. He also successfully reorganized M&A consulting and established a team of experts for ESG consulting that has already won several awards. After beginning his career at an LBBW predecessor institution, Erdle was made managing director for corporate loans and acquisition financing at Société Générale and returned to the LBBW Group in 2008 as managing director of Süd-Beteiligungen GmbH. He took over responsibility for Corporate Finance in 2013 and in 2021 was promoted to director of LBBW’s entire corporate finance activities.