Münster/Frankfurt, February 25, 2026 – The strategy, IT and management consultancy zeb mourns the passing of its cofounder Henner Schierenbeck. On February 21, the 79-year-old professor at the Universities of Basel and Münster and academic father of modern bank management passed away after a long illness, surrounded by his family. With Schierenbeck’s passing, zeb has lost a leading entrepreneurial figure. Likewise, the academic discipline of business administration has lost an outstanding scholar, who shaped academic teaching and research in bank management and controlling for decades and whose work is inextricably linked to the success of the management consultancy zeb.

Henner Schierenbeck, born on June 23, 1946, in Bremen, was one of the cofounders of zeb (“Zentrum für ertragsorientiertes Bankmanagement”) alongside Bernd Rolfes in 1992. The aim of founding a management consultancy exclusively for the financial services industry was to scientifically address the financial institutions’ growing need for consulting in the early 1990s and to combine this with high-quality concepts and practical implementation. At the time, Henner Schierenbeck held the Chair of Bank Management at the University of Münster (WWU). Bernd Rolfes worked there as his assistant.

Thorsten Helbig and Sven Krämer Managing Directors of zeb:

“We mourn the passing of Henner Schierenbeck, an inspiring person and outstanding academic teacher, the cofounder of our company. His openness, his scientific curiosity and his ambition to develop concepts that work in practice became the foundation of zeb’s success. We owe him a debt of gratitude and will honor his memory. Our thoughts are with his family and all those who had the privilege of getting to know him as a teacher and colleague.”

Bernd Rolfes, cofounder of zeb:

“Henner Schierenbeck was my academic teacher and close companion for many decades, my friend. He was a driving force, entrepreneur, advisor and, for many of us, an influential thinker. His ambition to not only describe bank management from a scientific perspective but also to develop it systematically so that it actually takes effect in credit institutions had a profound influence on me and many others. And for this, I am genuinely grateful to him. What we both started will be continued by all of us in his spirit in research, teaching and consulting.”

About Henner Schierenbeck

After studying Business Administration at Freie Universität Berlin and graduating as Diplom-Kaufmann, Henner Schierenbeck was awarded his doctorate by Ralf-Bodo Schmidt at the University of Freiburg in 1972 and later qualified as a professor there. From 1978 to 1980, Henner Schierenbeck held a university professorship for Corporate Accounting and then until 1990 the Chair of Bank Management at the University of Münster (WWU). This chair was also associated with the management of the Chair of Banking (Institut für Kreditwesen). From 1990 until his retirement as a professor in January 2010, he was a full professor for Bank Management and Controlling at the University of Basel’s Faculty of Business and Economics.

Henner Schierenbeck was the author and editor of a number of books on banking and insurance and penned numerous academic articles. His most important publications include the textbook “Grundzüge der Betriebswirtschaftslehre” about the fundamentals of business administration and the three-volume work “Ertragsorientiertes Bankmanagement” about the concept of profit-oriented bank management. He also held various positions in scientific advisory boards and committees, including at zeb.business school. The University of Latvia in Riga and the Mercator School of Management in Duisburg, Germany, awarded him honorary doctoral degrees in 1999 and 2005 respectively. In 2007, he was awarded the Dr. Kausch Prize of the University of St. Gallen for outstanding services to the theory and practice of accounting and management in banks. Since his time at the University of Freiburg, Henner Schierenbeck successfully helped to build research and teaching at Deutsche Immobilien Akademie (DIA) in Freiburg.

Together with his scientific team, Henner Schierenbeck developed the concept of profit-oriented bank management (“ertragsorientiertes Bankmanagement”) and made it state of the art of modern bank controlling. The collaboration of Schierenbeck and Rolfes on the further development of the opportunity interest rate concept led to the funds transfer pricing method, which is used today in every bank.

About zeb

Since 1992, zeb, a leading strategy, management and IT consultancy, has been offering a full range of consulting services in the financial services industry, which is heavily influenced by regulation and digital transformation. Clients include banks (incl. savings banks and neobanks) and fintech companies, insurers and insurtech companies, asset managers, captives, as well as numerous other specialized European financial services providers and financial intermediaries.

zeb was founded in 1992 and operates offices in Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Münster (HQ). Its international offices are located in Amsterdam, Kyiv, London, Luxembourg, Milan, Oslo, Stockholm, Vienna, Warsaw and Zurich. In industry rankings, zeb has repeatedly been classed and acknowledged as the “best consultancy” for the banking and insurance industry.