Countess Carola von Schmettow (, née Krautwurst; born 23 February 1964) is a German businesswoman who served as the chief executive officer of

HSBC Trinkaus HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt AG, operating as HSBC Deutschland, is a German financial services company. It traces its history back to 1785 and is one of the longest-established members of the HSBC Group. HSBC in Germany has operations in private, c ...

from 2015 to 2021.

Early life

Carola Krautwurst was born on 23 February 1964 in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

. Her father was a civil engineer and her mother was a construction technician. She studied classical music with a concentration on vocal performance at the

Robert Schumann Hochschule Robert Schumann Hochschule is a school for music studies at university level in Düsseldorf, Germany. It has a student body of some 850 from over forty countries. Forty-seven full-time and part-time faculty and two hundred associate professors pr ...

, graduating in 1989. She later attended the

University of Düsseldorf A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

, graduating in 1992 with a degree in mathematics and physical chemistry.

Career

Von Schmettow started her career at HSBC Trinkhaus in 1992 and served as a board member from 2006. In 2014, HSBC named her as chief executive of its German unit HSBC Trinkaus, replacing Andreas Schmitz. In addition to her role at HSBC Trinkhaus, Von Schmettow served on the board of directors for

HSBC France HSBC Continental Europe, known until December 2020 as HSBC France SA, is a subsidiary of HSBC, headquartered in Paris. It has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, a ...

, VV Versicherungsverein des Bankgewerbes,

ThyssenKrupp ThyssenKrupp AG (, ; stylized as thyssenkrupp) is a German industrial engineering and steel production multinational conglomerate. It resulted from the 1999 merger of Thyssen AG and Krupp and has its operational headquarters in Duisburg and E ...

. She also served as chairperson of the management board for Burckhardt Compression, as well as the chairperson of the supervisory board at HSBC Trinkaus Investment Managers and at Internationale Kapitalanlagegesellschaft. She had previously worked as the chief executive officer of

HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...

Investments Deutschland GmbH. She was one of Germany's first female business executives in finance. In 2021, von Schmettow resigned from her positions at HSBC. From 2022, she was the subject of investigations into tax fraud.

Other activities

Corporate boards

* Barmenia, Member of the Advisory Board (since 2016) * L-Bank, Member of the Advisory Board2017 Annual Report

. *

Eurex Exchange Eurex Exchange is a German derivatives exchange which primarily offers trading in European based derivatives. The products traded on this exchange vary from German and Swiss debt instruments to European stocks and various stock indexes. All tran ...

, Chairman of the Exchange Council (since 2017) * Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Member of the Exchange Council * Pension Fund for the Finance Industry (BVV), Member of the Supervisory Board * NRW.Bank, Member of the Advisory Board *

, Member of the Supervisory Board (2012–2020) *

, Member of the Board of Directors (2015-2018)

Non-profit organizations

Association of German Banks The ''Bundesverband deutscher Banken'' (BdB, also branded as Bankenverband and in English as Association of German Banks) is the representative body of profit-oriented banks in Germany and a key lobby group for Germany's financial sector. The Bd ...

, Member of the Board of Directors *

Deutsche Bundesbank The Deutsche Bundesbank (, , colloquially Buba, sometimes alternatively abbreviated as BBk or DBB) is the National central bank (Eurosystem), national central bank for Germany within the Eurosystem. It was the German central bank from 1957 to 19 ...

, Member of the Advisory Board for North Rhine-Westphalia * Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Member of the Board of Trustees * German Derivatives Association (DDV), Member of the Strategic Board *

Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf ( HHU; ), named after German poet Heinrich Heine, is a public university in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, which was founded in 1965. It is the successor organization to Düsseldorf's Medical Academy of ...

, Member of the Council * , Member of the Board of Trustees * Kaiserswerther Diakonie, Member of the Board of Trustees *

Tonhalle Düsseldorf Tonhalle Düsseldorf is a concert hall in Düsseldorf. It was built by the architect Wilhelm Kreis. The resident orchestra, the ''Düsseldorfer Symphoniker'', play symphonic repertoire at the Tonhalle as well as opera at the Deutsche Oper am Rhei ...

, Member of the Board of Trustees *

ZEIT-Stiftung The charitable foundation ''Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius'' (house style: ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS) is registered in Hamburg. Its aim is to fund projects in research and scholarship, arts and culture, as well as education and training. I ...

, Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2014) *

Volkswagen Foundation The Volkswagen Foundation (German: ''VolkswagenStiftung'') is the largest German private nonprofit organization involved in the promotion and support of academic research. It is not affiliated to the present company, the Volkswagen Group. It wa ...

, Member of the Advisory Board (2011-2014) 2014 Annual Report

Personal life

She is married to Count Johannes von Schmettow and has five children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmettow, Carola Gräfin von Living people 1964 births Countesses in Germany German chief executives German financial businesspeople 20th-century German businesswomen 20th-century German businesspeople Women chief executives Chairmen of HSBC Businesspeople from Düsseldorf Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf alumni Von Schmettow family 21st-century German businesswomen 21st-century German businesspeople Robert Schumann Hochschule alumni