Interview with Martin Blessing

Chairman of the Board of Managing DirectorsCommerzbank AG

"We believe that the economy globally will grow, but only slowly. In Europe growth in 2013 will be very slow. In Germany growth in the first half of 2013 will not be very positive, but will pick up later in the year and going forward."

"Besides focused growth we definitely need to keep our costs under control ... banking will be a tough environment to operate in. And we need to preserve our capital position or even increase the capital that we employ in our business."

"We believe the underlying growth trends will be slow. So we have to just be better than the competition in these markets, and that is also one of the reasons why we have to keep costs under control."

"We believe that one challenge for our organisation, and for banking in Europe, is the stability of the Eurozone and the development of the currency."

"We have changed customer strategies to focus much more on customer satisfaction. We have increased the number of customers included in the satisfaction surveys we do significantly to almost 150,000 per year."

"The amount of debate with the different stakeholders, and especially the regulators, has grown significantly. And the numbers of reports and special enquiries undertaken have also gone up in a similar way."

As part of PwC's 16th Annual Global CEO Survey, we spoke with Martin Blessing, Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors of Commerzbank AG. In this short video, Martin shares his outlook for economic growth and outlines some of the challenges facing the banking sector.

Martin is Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors of Commerzbank AG since 2008. He holds the responsibility for Business Segment Central and Eastern Europe, Group Communications, Group Development and Strategy and Group Legal. He was member of the Board of Managing Directors Commerzbank AG since 2001.

Prior to Commerzbank AG, he was Chairman of the Board, Advance Bank AG (2000-2001), Joint Manager, Private Customers, Dresdner Bank AG (1997-2000) and Consultant at McKinsey (1989 – 1996).

Martin studied Business Administration at the University of Frankfurt and University of St. Gallen and he holds an MBA from the University of Chicago.

These interviews contain the opinions and views of the CEOs interviewed, and do not necessarily represent the opinions and views of PwC.