By Christiaan Hetzner

FRANKFURT,(Reuters) - In search of a new finance chief, Deutsche Bank in March chose to dip into German luxury carmaker BMW's deep pool of talent to fish out a new executive.
Germany's flagship bank probably just couldn't afford Porsche's CFO extraordinaire, Holger Haerter.
Worth an estimated 30 million euros a year at least in annual salary, or more than twice what Deutsche's own top executive Josef Ackermann earns, Haerter played a key role in transforming Porsche into the most profitable carmaker in the world.
Now, twelve years after being plucked from relative obscurity by Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking, Haerter is set to put the finishing touches on the imminent takeover of Volkswagen , a company about 15 times bigger in terms of revenue and close to 30 times the employees.
Last week, VW shares quintupled in the space of less than 48 hours to the astronomic price of 1,000 euros apiece as news Haerter had managed to buy up virtually all of its votes in freefloat without anyone catching wind led to a massive short squeeze that briefly made VW the world's most valuable company.
Long operating in the shadows behind his larger-than-life boss, the 52 year old CFO with the close cropped hair and stubble beard has fashioned out of Porsche what investors respectfully call a "hedge fund with a captive auto business".
What sets Haerter apart from his colleagues at other carmakers most of all is his uncanny expertise with derivatives.
After Wiedeking boasted at the Frankfurt auto show in 2003 that "my CFO can make money even when we're not selling cars," analysts at Goldman Sachs authored a 48 page research report entirely devoted to Haerter's complex web of currency hedges.
"Wiedeking may be responsible for strategy but I believe Haerter should largely be credited with the implementation. The Porsche CEO can trust him blindly," said Commerzbank analyst Daniel Schwarz.
Helping generate near-20 pretax margins at a niche sports car manufacturer like Porsche is anything but easy, but pulling off the acquisition of the world's third largest carmaker in roughly three years without going hat in hand to your shareholders for funding is something entirely different.
Haerter's magnum opus started back in September 2005 -- when Porsche began to buy into Volkswagen -- orchestrating the first stealth takeover via the use of call options settled in cash as opposed to stock.

WAGNERIAN HOCKEY IN NORWAY
These allowed Haerter to effectively lock in a price to buy large amounts of VW shares later on without the need to disclose publicly its purchases as it otherwise would need were he acquiring plain vanilla options deliverable in shares.
One of the industry's best kept secrets, the market speculated constantly -- often incorrectly as this week's massive short squeeze showed -- just how much of VW Porsche controlled.
The true brilliance emerged when Porsche also reported windfall accounting gains from those options as the value of those options grew along with the VW share price.
The company earned hundreds of millions of euros easily from the VW hedges in 2005/06 and the following fiscal year, Porsche revealed gains attributable to positive effects of stock option transactions amounting to no less than 3.6 billion euros.
When Porsche reports 2007/08 earnings later this month it is widely expected to report profits exceeding the 7.46 billion euros ($9.53 billion) in revenue.
Haerter accomplished all of this despite a rather unremarkable career that last saw him heading up finances at German linoleum maker DLW, where he worked for two years until a close friend of Wiedeking recommended him to serve as the Porsche CEO's top lieutenant.
Neither did Haerter serve as a high powered investment banker like Allianz's Paul Achleitner nor did he do a stint at McKinsey like many German top executives, including Deutsche Post's Frank Appel.
"He's street smart. You don't need to have a degree from Harvard to understand how options work," one London-based analyst said.
"Haerter possesses foresight. Like many family run businesses and unlike many corporate managers, he plans with an extremely long view of the future. I'm convinced he still has VW call options he can exercise to buy VW shares for less than 100 euros each."
Haerter, married with one daughter, is an avid literature fan who also makes the pilgrimage to Bayreuth for the annual Wagner opera festival and serves as an honorary consul for Norway.
A native of Bad Kreuznach about an hour's drive southwest of Frankfurt, the CFO is also a fan of the Bietigheim Steelers, currently the best ice hockey team in Germany's second division, a team Porsche has sponsored for years.