Hilmar Kopper (13 March 1935 – 11 November 2021) was a German banker, and former chairman of the Board of Deutsche Bank (1989–1997).
Kopper received widespread public and media attention in 1994, when he used the word "peanuts" to describe a sum of DM 50 million.
A jury of linguistic scholars subsequently voted the term as German Un-word of the year, thus criticizing the widely differing definitions of a non-notable amount of money by bank managers and average people.
[7] With some self-irony, Kopper posed on a heap of peanuts for advertisement of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ("Dahinter steckt immer ein kluger Kopf [de], or "There is always a clever mind behind it").
[3] During Kopper's time as a trainee in the U.S., he met the author Ernest Hemingway by chance on a beach in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1958 and remained a life-long fan of his books.