Biography

Ms. Helfer was appointed a director in 2022. She has more than 40 years of experience in the international finance industry, of which more than 25 years focused on the shipping sector, with special expertise in the area of complex distressed portfolio management. From 2016 to 2023, at the request of the Federal State of Schleswig-Holstein and the City of Hamburg, Ms. Helfer served as a Member of the Board of Managing Directors of the newly established portfoliomanagement AöR. In this role, Ms. Helfer and her team had the responsibility of winding down a portfolio of non-performing shipping loans with an amount of EUR 4.1 billion transferred from HSH Nordbank AG to portfoliomanagement AöR. In 2011, Ms. Helfer became the Chief Representative of DVB Bank in Greece, where she managed DVB’s local office in Athens, reporting directly to the CEO of the bank. Prior to that, in 2005, Ms. Helfer joined DVB Bank SE in Hamburg, where she became Deputy Head of the Global Container, Car Carrier, Intermodal & Ferry Group. She commenced her career in international ship financing in 2000 in Vereins- und Westbank AG (merged into UniCredit). Ms. Helfer was a Member of the Advisory Board of Deutsche Bundesbank in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern until 2023.