Transport Minister dismisses railway boss Lutz

After eight years at the helm of Deutsche Bahn, it's over. Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz must step down. This was announced Thursday by government and railway sources. Federal Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder will announce further details on Thursday afternoon. The two men had previously met for crisis talks at the Federal Ministry of Transport.

It had recently become increasingly clear that Lutz would not be able to remain at the helm of the railway company much longer. While Schnieder's predecessor, Volker Wissing (formerly FDP, then independent), had protected Lutz for years and trusted that he would ultimately find the right strategy to lead the railway out of the crisis, Schnieder (CDU) was significantly more critical of him from the outset. Although Lutz had recently consistently asserted that he would return to profitability by the end of the year and also improve punctuality, he was never able to present a real plan for how this would be achieved.

In recent months, several incidents have further strained the already strained relationship between the two men. First, the board of directors quietly attempted to fill three management positions at the group's subsidiary DB Infrago. Schnieder felt ambushed and halted the process until further notice. Then, despite unprecedented billions of euros in investments in the railway, Lutz announced that he foresaw a funding gap of €17 billion by 2029. Schnieder immediately questioned this claim, saying he could not understand how the head of the railway company arrived at this figure.

Finally, the Transport Minister also canceled his participation in the celebrations marking the start of the second major corridor renovation of the Hamburg-Berlin line at the beginning of August. Deutsche Bahn typically turns such events into a major media spectacle, and Lutz and Wissing had always used the opportunity to promote their plans to the industry and the public and demonstrate unity. Clearly, such a message was not in the spirit of the new Federal Transport Minister.

Richard Lutz has been working for Deutsche Bahn since 1994. He comes from a true railway family; both his father and mother worked for the railway. Lutz began his career as a controller. Many associates say he's never truly lost his passion for numbers and his meticulous attention to financial statements. It's said he loves his figures more than the railway itself. It's just that he hasn't been satisfied with them for some time.

While his rise to CFO in 2010 was logical, his appointment to the top of the company was more of a coincidence: When former Deutsche Bahn CEO Rüdiger Grube resigned at short notice in January 2017, Lutz initially took over the position on an interim basis. A feverish search for a successor was unsuccessful. Ultimately, then-Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) decided to retain Lutz at the helm. That was in March 2017.

Since then, the transport ministers have changed: first, Andreas Scheuer (CSU) was responsible for the railway, then Volker Wissing, and now Patrick Schnieder. The personnel on the railway board has also changed constantly. Only the boss has always remained the same.

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