Gregor Scheller has been Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Baywa agricultural trading group, which is in deep crisis, for eight months. Given the precarious situation of the listed company, which is part of the co-operative sector, this is not a job where the fun factor plays a prominent role. The 67-year-old banker is driven above all by a sense of duty to help restructure Baywa, which is heavily indebted and in the red, and to turn it around in the medium to long term.

The former CEO of Volks- und Raiffeisenbank Bamberg-Forchheim is well connected among the Bavarian credit co-operatives, which are also Baywa's largest single shareholder with a 33.8% stake. The mandate as Supervisory Board Chairman is the second time he has taken on a fire fighting role in the Bavarian cooperative network. From February 2022 to the end of July 2024, the Franconian acted as interim Chairman of the Board of Management and President of the Association of Cooperatives Bavaria (GVB). Following internal power struggles, which led to the ousting of his predecessor, Jürgen Gros, he took on the role.

A desire to help out is the main motive behind his work at Baywa. In mid-July last year, when Baywa declared itself a restructuring case in a mandatory stock exchange announcement, Scheller was initially primarily concerned with setting up a rescue package for the company, which had got into difficulties (through its own fault). In his capacity as GVB President, he issued a guarantee for Baywa's continued existence by publicly announcing the unqualified support of the cooperative primary banks. This averted the imminent bankruptcy of the Baywa group.

Together with the numerous creditor banks, he managed to ensure that Baywa has so far received financial injections from the banking industry totalling 1 billion euros, to bridge the gap. The group itself is cutting 1,300 jobs at its head office, is planning to divest many ancillary activities, and is preparing a capital increase. With the prescribed downsizing program, the patient should be able to leave the hospital bed by the end of 2027. This is the plan being pursued by the main shareholders, the creditor banks, Scheller and the restructuring director, Michael Baur, who comes from Alix Partners.

While Scheller can now point to some initial progress, there has not been much movement at personnel level on the Supervisory Board, which shares responsibility for the financial disaster. Apart from the appointment of a new head of the supervisory board and the resignation of Deputy Supervisory Board Chairman Wolfgang Altmüller last November, little has happened on the capital side of the board so far. At management board level, CEO Marcus Pöllinger left at the end of October 2024, and CFO Andreas Helber will leave in March this year.

Scheller is not making much progress with his plan to fill the Supervisory Board with independent, knowledgeable individuals. This is mainly due to the fact that the shareholders, especially the credit cooperatives, elected many board members for a further term of office until 2028 at the last Annual General Meeting on 11 June 2024.

These June 2024 board member votes are proving to be a boomerang for Scheller. CSU politicians such as Monika Hohlmeier, the daughter of former Bavarian Minister President Franz Josef Strauß (who died in 1988), and credit cooperative functionaries such as Wilhelm-Josef Oberhofer continue to be members of the Supervisory Board, even though they no longer have any moral standing there. But everything is legally correct. Oberhofer, in particular, who is also Chairman of the Audit Committee, seems to be glued to his chair. In contrast to him, Altmüller at least behaved resolutely.