Hypovereinsbank is changing its management personnel responsibilities. Georgiana Lazar-O’Callaghan is leaving the Unicredit Group after around 20 years. According to company information, she would like to pursue new professional challenges outside the bank. Your successor has already been chosen: Lars Jungemann will take over as head of the People & Culture department at Hypovereinsbank (HVB) on September 1st.
Who is Lars Jungemann? – the new People & Culture boss of Hypovereinsbank?
Jungemann is a native of the bank. He has been working for HVB since 2004 and has worked his way up in the laboratory relations and law departments over the past almost 22 years. He currently holds the position of Head of Labor Law & Labor Relations, Compensations & Benefits, Pensions.
The lawyer started his professional career as a labor law attorney at the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Peringer. According to an HVB spokeswoman, Jungemann has helped shape cross-border strategic people and culture initiatives and transformation projects in recent years. In this context, he also helped shape the collaboration with the employee representatives in Germany.
What did Georgiana Lazar-O’Callaghan achieve at HVB?
His predecessor, Georgiana Lazar-O’Callaghan, had been with the Unicredit Group since 2007 and was head of HR in Bucharest, London and Vienna before taking on the role of head of human resources at HVB in Germany in 2024. She also sits on the supervisory board of Unicredit in Slovenia and Hungary. According to Marion Höllinger, spokeswoman for the management of HVB, Lazar-O’Callaghan made an important contribution to the bank’s transformation and enriched the bank and the management team with “her strategic expertise, her passion and her inspiring personality”.
The bank says about her successor: “With Lars Jungemann, we have appointed an extremely experienced manager from our own successor pool as head of the People & Culture department in Germany,” says Andrea Orcel, CEO of Unicredit and Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board of Hypovereinsbank.
HVB: Cost reduction and job cuts
HVB is currently in a good financial position. In 2025 it achieved the highest profit in its history. At the same time, a strict austerity course is being pursued, which is being pushed by the parent company – Unicredit. Operating costs were reduced by 4 percent last year. This was also achieved through ongoing staff reductions. According to media reports, more than 1,000 jobs have been cut since the beginning of 2024.
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Lena Onderka is editorially responsible for the Employee Experience & Retention area – which also includes, for example, the topics of BGM and employee surveys. She also looks after the topic of diversity. She is also the editorial contact for the German Human Resources Summit and the HR Forum Banking.
