The son of a carpenter,[1] Walter-Borjans was born 1952 in the West German city of Krefeld and studied economics at the University of Bonn and reached a PhD.

[2] From 1991 until 1998, Walter-Borjans worked as spokesperson of the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, then led by Minister-President Johannes Rau.

From 2010 to 2017 Walter-Borjans served as State Minister of Finance of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the government of Minister-President Hannelore Kraft.

[3] On Walter-Borjans's initiative, the state government on several occasions resorted to buying Swiss account data from whistle-blowers to pursue German tax dodgers.

[4] In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian CSU) and the SPD following the 2013 federal elections, Walter-Borjans was part of the SPD delegation in the working group on financial policies and the national budget, led by Wolfgang Schäuble and Olaf Scholz.