Neverman is a financial expert
Successor for Graichen found
05/22/2023, 10:09 am
According to media reports, Philipp Nimmermann is to succeed Patrick Graichen in the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Unlike his predecessor, Nimmermann is not an energy expert. As a financial expert, he has had to deal with troubled banks and corona aid in recent years.
According to media reports, Philipp Nimmermann from the Green Party is to become the new State Secretary for Energy in the Federal Ministry of Economics. He succeeds Patrick Graichen, who lost his position last week after allegations of nepotism. Nimmermann is currently State Secretary to the Hessian Economics Minister Tarek Al-Wazir.
Unlike Graichen, Nimmermann is not an energy expert, but comes from the financial world. According to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, the doctor of economics was chief economist at the Frankfurt private bank BHF before he became state secretary to the green finance minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Monika Heinold, in 2014. The Green Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck, who was Deputy Prime Minister in Kiel at the time, also knew him from this time. In 2019, Nimmermann moved back to Hesse to Tarek Al-Wazir. It is still unclear when exactly he will take up the new post.
Last Wednesday, Habeck put his State Secretary Graichen on temporary retirement – after he had held on to him for almost three weeks despite all calls for his resignation. Graichen admitted at the end of April that he had helped his best man to a top position at the state-owned German Energy Agency. In the course of further investigations, a climate protection project approved by Graichen came to light. It had been requested by the Berlin state association of the environmental organization BUND – on whose board Graichen’s sister sits.
Graichen made himself “too vulnerable to be able to effectively exercise his office,” said Habeck. Graichen’s close networking with the Öko-Institut and the Berlin think tank Agora Energiewende also caused criticism.
In this respect, the 57-year-old financier Nimmermann is completely unsuspicious. He made a name for himself, among other things, in the crisis at the North German state bank HSH Nordbank – which was privatized under his aegis. The states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg had previously had to support the troubled bank with guarantees worth billions. In Hesse, he had recently taken care of the various aid packages, be it corona aid for companies or hardship funds in the energy price crisis. In the meantime, he was also traded for a board position at the Bundesbank.