About Our Team

Volker Potthoff

Managing Partner

Volker Potthoff is founder and Managing Partner of ADDWIS GmbH. He is of-counsel at the law firm CMS supporting strategic business development in the fields of Capital Markets, Corporate Governance and China outbound investments in Europe. He has more than 30 years experience in capital market structures, corporate governance and people management.

Volker served in various functions in leading positions for financial institutions as well as for commercial companies. He started his career in New York as associate for the law firm White & Case. Later he worked for eight years as legal counsel of BHF-Bank. In 1994 he joined the Deutsche Börse Group where started as General Counsel and became later on member of the Executive Board, at first responsible for the cash market business of the Group and afterwards for the Banking & Custody Business He left Deutsche Börse in 2006.

Volker served in several Supervisory Boards (non-executive boards) in listed companies as well as non-listed companies, amongst others in two listed Chinese enterprises and in a family owned medical device company. He is a member of the management board of the Obermark Group, an investment holding company based in Luxembourg.

Volker Potthoff was a member of the German Corporate Governance Code Commission. In 2009 he co-founded ArMiD (Aufsichtsräte Mittelstand in Deutschland), an association of non executive board members in mid size companies (www.armid.de). In 2012 Volker founded a charity foundation for chronically diseased children and adolescents (www.aktion-luftsprung.de). He is guest lecturer of the University of Zurich.

Rainer Riess

Managing Partner

Rainer Riess is Managing Partner of Addwis GmbH. He is an Independent Advisor with more than 25 years of experience in senior management, corporate governance and the global exchange and financial services industry, growing businesses and improving their efficiency and effectiveness, driving sound and sustainable developments. He serves as Director General of the Federation of European Stock Exchanges (FESE AISBL) on behalf of Addwis and is a Board Member of the Moscow Exchange, heading the Audit Committee.

He has extensive experience in senior management and corporate governance with a focus on leadership, strategy, effectiveness, compliance, internal control systems and investor relations. As a strategic thinker and team player as well as economist and implementer he has been leading various transactions creating, changing and managing corporate structures, corporate governance and corporate controls. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and has an extensive personal network with industry, regulators and European policy makers.

He served for many years as Vice Chairman of the Board of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and was responsible for the cash market business of Deutsche Börse AG. In his tenure at Deutsche Börse he created and managed markets, drove changes in the European corporate governance and accounting practice, financial market regulation and supervision of market player. Major initiatives include running the cash market in a competitive MiFiD environment and financial market crises, the creation of DTB Deutsche Terminbörse / Eurex, developing European primary markets (Neuer Markt, indices, corporate governance and regulation), launch of the Xetra electronic trading system and the CCP as well as the creation of the European ETF and structured products markets.

Rainer also served as a Member of the Secondary Markets Consultative Working Group at ESMA (European Securities Markets Authority) and is a Member of the Board of Trustees of several academic and charitable organisations. He holds a Master in Economics from Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt and an MBA from the University of Miami where he was a Fulbright Scholar.