© Bert Bostelmann

Joachim Wuermeling took office as a member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank on 1 November 2016. The 56-year-old Wuermeling, who has a PhD in law, succeeds Joachim Nagel, who left the Executive Board on 30 April 2016 before the end of his full term. At its inaugural meeting in its current composition, the Executive Board decided to give Mr Wuermeling responsibility for the Information Technology and Markets directorates general.

Prior to taking on his current position, Wuermeling held a variety of executive-level posts in the financial and insurance industries and in politics. From 2011 until his departure for the Bundesbank, Wuermeling was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association of Sparda-Banken in Frankfurt am Main. Prior to that, he was a member of the Executive Board of the German Insurance Association (Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft) for around three years. From 2005 to 2008, Wuermeling was state secretary (with civil servant status) for European affairs at the Federal Ministry for Economics and Technology under minister Michael Glos (CSU), where he was also responsible for coordinating European policy matters.

Wuermeling's predecessor on the Bundesbank's Executive Board, Joachim Nagel, had been appointed to serve as a General Manager at KfW with effect from 1 November 2016. The Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank had previously approved Mr Nagel's departure prior to the end of his full term and mandated a cooling-off period of six months before taking on the new position.

Nomination process for Executive Board members

The Bundesbank's Executive Board comprises six members: the President, the Vice-President and four other members. The President, the Vice-President and one other member are nominated by the Federal Government, the other three members by the Bundesrat (the second house of Parliament representing the federal states) in agreement with the Federal Government. They are then all appointed by the Federal President. Executive Board members are generally appointed for an eight-year term; under certain circumstances, they may also be appointed for shorter terms of at least five years.