By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – Former German finance minister Jörg Kukies is joining Morgan Stanley, returning to the banking sector after years in senior public office. He is to start in London in May and move to Frankfurt in November to become Country Head for Germany and Austria as well as CEO and Chairman of the Management Boards of Morgan Stanley Europe SE Group.

Kukies had been one of the most prominent figures in German financial policymaking under Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Before his brief stint as finance minister (November 2024 to May 2025), he served as a state secretary in the finance ministry and later in the chancellery, after earlier working at Goldman Sachs, including as co-chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs AG and managing director of its Frankfurt branch.

His name had surfaced before in ECB-related speculation. In 2019, after Sabine Lautenschläger’s resignation created an opening on the European Central Bank’s Executive Board, Kukies was among the names mentioned in Berlin as Germany weighed a successor.

There has also been some more recent speculation that Kukies could figure in a future German push for an ECB Executive Board seat, or even in wider succession talk around the presidency. But his decision to take a senior role at Morgan Stanley now appears to make such an outcome unlikely.