BERLIN, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Germany's new finance minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) has appointed Joerg Kukies, a senior executive at the U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs, as one of four ministerial secretaries of state, German media reported on Monday.
Kukies will step down from his lucrative role as co-head of Goldman Sachs' German operations to assist Scholz in the areas of European policy and financial regulation.
The 50-year-old card-carrying member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) once presided over the SPD's regional youth organisation (Juso) in the state of Rhineland-Palatine, a position which was succeeded by current SPD parliamentary faction leader Andrea Nahles.
Kukies studied economics at Harvard University and received a doctorate from the University of Chicago before working for Goldman Sachs in London and Frankfurt.
Aside from the banker, Scholz has selected three political veterans and long-standing confidantes to join him in the finance ministry as secretaries of state: Wolfgang Schmidt, Rolf Boesinger and Werner Gatzer.
