But now that the voluble Bruns has quit and been succeeded by soft-spoken Jens Wilhelm, will the Sturm-und-Drang style give way to a milder approach?
The 35-year-old Bruns, for one, is convinced of it. “Things are changing at Union,” he contends. “The kind of activism I want to pursue increasingly goes against” the grain of corporate lending and investment banking, two activities dear to the heart of the bank that now controls Union.
Indeed, Bruns’s announcement last July of his resignation (he stayed on through February 22) coincided with the merger of DG Bank and GZ Bank, the investment banking arms of Germany’s 1,800 cooperative banks: Together the two banks, now known as DZ Bank, own more than 70 percent of Union, and that combined clout has raised fears that the activism will be toned down to avoid antagonizing the big German companies that are the bank’s clients.
Union and DZ officials insist that there will be no change in the activist stance and point to one sign of continuity: Union’s annual “name and shame” list of underperforming European companies was published, as always, in February.
Whatever Wilhelm’s tactics turn out to be (he declines to be interviewed until he assumes his new post), he can hardly be more controversial than firebrand Bruns, who was known for publicly berating management at annual meetings. Confronting top managers at companies like Deutsche Telekom, HVB Group and Volkswagen made Bruns one of Germany’s best-known investors -- and helped turn Union into the fastest-growing mutual fund manager in the country.
Bruns is moving to Chicago, his wife’s native city, and negotiating with hedge fund groups about running a portfolio specializing in German stocks.
Although Wilhelm, who’s also 35, made a name for himself overseeing French equities at Dresdner’s Deutscher Investment-Trust fund arm, he hasn’t run a portfolio since becoming head of equities at DIT in 1999. Instead, he has focused exclusively on performance monitoring and business development.
Nor will he be managing money at Union, which he joins on April 1: His mandate is to build up the institutional business.
Unlike Bruns, who chose to sit with portfolio managers and made frequent buy and sell calls, Wilhelm has opted for an upstairs office in Union’s corporate suite. Some nervous insiders see this as ominous. “We are worried that he’ll prove to be just another gray corporate type and much more pliable,” says one Union money manager.
Those close to Wilhelm, however, insist that he is determined to continue Union’s activism -- just from a more discreet vantage point.
