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Bernd Drouven will retire from Aurubis at the end of the year at his own request. The Supervisory Board cannot yet present a successor. Its personnel committee have begun the search for successors in the short term. According to the Hamburger Abendblatt the CEO of Europe's largest copper smelter was dissatisfied with its major shareholder, Salzgitter.

Achim Kassow is leaving Commerzbank at his own request and on 1 August becomes CEO at the Oldenburgische Landesbank. The Supervisory Board met his request to end his mandate as of 12 July. The board member had already had to give up the retail division in October and was now only responsible for Eastern Europe, which will in future be co-supervised by personnel director Ulrich Sieber.

At the end of this year's freenet General Meeting on 30 June Thorsten Kraemer will resign. The Supervisory Board Chairman cites "personal reasons" for his withdrawal. Former RTL head Helmut Thoma will also retire then. The wireless telephony company on 20 May suggested two new candidates for the Supervisory Board: accountant Hartmut Schenk and Niclas Rausche. Schenk is currently Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Drillisch and will resign this post in the event of his election. In the middle of the month, the Supervisory Board extended the contracts of Christopher Vilanek (CEO) to the end of 2015 and Joachim Preisig (CFO) to the end of 2014. Drillisch had recently revived old merger rumors by the last significant increase in its stake in freenet.

Wolfgang Schäfers is to succeed Gerhard Niesslein as board spokesman, said IVG Immobilien on 17 May. The acting CEO of the Bonn-based real estate group will for personal reasons not renew his management contract expiring in October 2011. The Supervisory Board will immediately start discussions to complete the management team again.

At the MAN General Meeting on 27 June Volkswagen is to claim the majority on the Supervisory Board with a total of five seats among the eight shareholder representatives - even though the major shareholder does not hold a majority of the Munich-based company’s capital. This is based on the list of candidates it published on 17 May. In addition, Martin Winterkorn, Jochem Heizmann and Hans Dieter Pötsch, three VW executives also on the Supervisory Board of Scania, are to move on to the Supervisory Board. The truck manufacturer acknowledged that the proposed appointment of the three Wolfsburg representatives is against the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code. This kind of choice would however facilitate cooperation with Scania, and therefore be in the interest of the group, MAN justified its view. After Renate Köcher was not available for re-election, Angelika Pohlenz will in future be the only female representative on the monitoring body. Ulf Berkenhagen, Rudolf Rupprecht and Heiner Hasford will, however, vacate their chairs on the Supervisory Board. Ferdinand Piëch, however, is venturing another five-year period. The Volkswagen patriarch wants to merge MAN and Scania. Several experts also criticized the dual role of the 74-year-old as chief overseer of both VW and MAN. It was unclear whether Piëch would mostly represent the interests of MAN shareholders or of Volkswagen. This was a blatant contradiction, not resolvable in one person, said Union Investment fund manager Ingo Speich in the FAZ.

Q-Cells announced on 5 May that Gerhard Rauter has resigned his Supervisory Board office at his own request with immediate effect,. The Supervisory Board had complied with that request at its meeting. Rauter had since October 2007 been COO (Chief Operations Officer) for the photovoltaic company, most recently responsible for production and technology.