Meet "Germany's Dumbest Bankers"

by Jon Azpiri | September 19, 2008 at 09:58 am

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If you thought you've had a bad week at work, consider the plight of Peter Fleischer and Detlef Leinberger, two German bankers who cost their company more than 500 million euros by approving a fund transfer to Lehman Brothers after the investment bank had already declared bankruptcy.

The state lender KfW transferred some $500 million to the U.S. bank on the day it filed for bankruptcy protection, a transaction that has German politicians fuming. The remainder of the money was transferred in the days before.

That the transfer took place "is a clear signal that the risk management … is not intact at KfW," a visibly angry German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told reporters in Berlin Thursday.

Germany's mass-selling daily Bild was more blunt: On its Web site Friday, it ran the headline "Germany's dumbest bankers" over the pictures of KfW's management board members.