The head of Commerzbank’s corporates and markets division has resigned after 25 years at the German bank to become chief executive of a Hamburg-based shipping company.

Nicholas Teller, who has spent his entire career with Commerzbank since joining from university in 1982, worked in the bank’s branches in London, Prague and Hamburg before moving to its Frankfurt headquarters, from where he has run the corporates and markets unit since it was formed in November 2004.