Friedrich Merz

Friedrich Merz  link (Lawyer,politician,lobbyist,deep state actor)
Born	11 November 1955
Nationality	German
German Blackrock lobbyist who was selected to become Chancellor of Germany in 2025. Former chairman of the deep state Atlantik-Brücke.

Friedrich Merz is a German Blackrock lobbyist who was selected to become Chancellor of Germany in 2025. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he was Chairman of the transatlantic network Atlantik-Brücke until 2019, and is a staunch supporter of the European Union and NATO, having described himself as "a truly convinced European, a convinced transatlanticist." Merz advocates a closer union and "an army for Europe". He also sat on the supervisory board of the German branch of the world's largest asset manager BlackRock.

Career

He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1989 to 1994 and sat in the Bundestag from 1994 until 2009, where he chaired the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from 2000 to 2002. Merz was a candidate in the 2018 CDU leadership election, placing second; he was given the position in the 2021 leadership election , but did not succeed.

Bank lobbyism

From 2005 to 2014 (until 2009, in addition to being an elected representative) Merz worked as a partner in the international law firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP - a heavyweight in the industry with annual sales in the billions, one of the twenty largest law firms in the world and which mostly represents Wall Street companies.

As a representative of this law firm, Merz was hired as a lawyer by the German government (SoFFin) in 2010 to find a buyer for the ailing bank WestLB after the law firm already had dumped the bank's junk bonds worth 77 billion euros to a taxpayer-funded "Bad Bank". Merz received a fee of 5,000 euros per day from the government for his services. His engagement was also a success for the bank HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt, which played a role in the takeover of the WestLB assets. As a thank you for this, Merz was allowed to take over the presidency of the HSBC Trinkaus Board of Directors, a well paid position.

He sits on the boards of AXA Group AG, DBV-Winterthur Holding AG, Deutsche Börse AG, Ernst & Young AG, ROCKWOOL, WEPA Industrieholding SE, Commerzbank AG and the HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt. His biggest career move, however, was his appointment as chairman of the supervisory board of the German branch of the world's largest asset manager BlackRock.

He is a founding member of the neoliberal think tank Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft and sits on committees in the neoliberal network Stiftung Marktwirtschaft.