Michael Horn

Michael Horn was born on 4 November 1955 in Stuttgart. He studied economics at the University of Tübingen (roughly 1977–1982) and then built a classic German public-banking career inside the savings-bank (Sparkassen) system. He began at Kreissparkasse Böblingen, and in 1986 moved to the Sparkasse Ravensburg, where he rose to become deputy chairman of its board. From 1996 to 2002 he served as managing director of the Württemberg — and later Baden-Württemberg — Savings Banks Association (Sparkassenverband).

In July 2002 Horn joined the Board of Managing Directors of Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), Germany's largest Landesbank. From 2005 he was Deputy Chairman of the Board of both LBBW and its subsidiary BW-Bank, with responsibility over the retail/private-customer business and the bank's relationship with the regional savings banks; in later years his remit extended into wealth management.

His tenure was interrupted by the LBBW accounting-fraud (Bilanzfälschung) affair stemming from the bank's 2005–2008 financial statements and off-balance-sheet special-purpose entities. Alongside former CEO Siegfried Jaschinski and other ex-board members, Horn was charged; he was the only defendant still employed by LBBW at the time. In November 2013 he was temporarily released from his duties at his own request to protect the bank. The trial opened in February 2014, but after court-appointed experts (including Frankfurt finance professor Mark Wahrenburg) largely rejected the prosecution's case, the Stuttgart court discontinued the proceedings in April 2014 against payment of a monetary penalty (Einstellung gegen Geldauflage), i.e. without a criminal conviction. His suspension was rescinded in 2014 and he resumed his role as Deputy Chairman.

Horn stepped down and retired at the end of April 2020, at age 64, after nearly 18 years on the LBBW board; Andreas Götz (from Kreissparkasse Ostalb) took over the private-customer leadership from 1 July 2020. Public records also associate Horn with supervisory/advisory mandates in the savings-bank ecosystem during and after his career.

• No documented personal angel-investing thesis exists for this individual. He is a career commercial and savings-bank executive, not a venture or seed investor.
• Within LBBW his professional "focus" was the bank's retail/private-customer franchise, the Sparkassen (savings-bank) partnership network, and wealth/private banking — a corporate lending and deposit-banking mandate, not startup equity.
• LBBW as an institution does provide corporate finance and, historically, had venture-capital and equity arms, but there is no evidence tying Michael Horn personally to seed-stage startup investing.
• The stub's implied "seed check-writer" profile should be treated as a misclassification pending direct confirmation.