Heidelberg has a new CEO, bringing down the curtain on Gerold Linzbach’s tenure with nine months of his contract in place.
The new leader is Rainer Hundsdörfer who takes over on 14 November. The decision indicates that the financial restructuring that Linzbach carried out to stabilise the company is at an end and even he might have liked to lead the business in its next phase, Heidelberg’s board believed a new man would be needed.
Linzbach indicated that he would be leaving at the end of his contract in August, giving a full year to appoint his successor. In the event this has taken only a few months. It has helped that Hundsdörfer has been available. He had been chairman of the board of management at EBM-papst, the world’s leading producer of industrial fans. However, in May after a falling out due to “different views on future corporate management and governance” he left the privately owned business.
He had joined EBM-papst in September 2012 and is given credit for taking revenues from around €1 billion to €1.7 billion. This is clearly what Heidelberg wants to tap into. While Linzbach has been able to staunch the flow of losses, it has proved more difficult to grow sales, though the renewed focus on digital printing is laying the groundwork for growth in revenues, both from machines and also from related consumables.
Linzbach also failed to lift the Heidelberg share price which has languished at around €2.25 since his appointment. On Friday, on news of the new CEO’s appointment the share price reached €2.34, a monthly high.
Hundsdörfer’s earlier career had taken him to the US as VP sales and a marketing for German engineering group Trumpf. “We are delighted to have gained an internationally experienced leadership personality in Rainer Hundsdörfer to drive forward the reorientation of the company,” Heidelberg’s supervisory board chairman Siegfried Jaschinski says in a statement. “Hundsdörfer has acquired many years of specialist expertise with global technology leaders that will help pave the way forward to a successful digital future at Heidelberg.”
In further pursuit of that, the company has appointed Ulrich Hermann to the management board. Hermann joins from Wolters Kluwer Germany where as CEO, he is credited with the transformation of that business into a digital led information provider.
He fills a gap that will be vacant thanks to the departure of Harald Wiemer, who had been responsible for Heidelberg Services, though will not assume the same responsibilities. While Weimar will step aside in time for the official appointment on 14 November, he will supervise an orderly transition until the end of the financial year in March. Stephan Plenz and Dirk Kaliebe remain on the board.
Hundsdörfer is not expected to radically change the strategy set by Linzbach and rolled at at Drupa this year with its three-pronged approach of Services, Consumables and Equipment. In his first declaration, the incoming CEO says: “Heidelberg is moving toward customer focused technology and services in what is a changed market environment. We now need to make solid use of the opportunities digitisation presents for profitable growth.”
That growth is what Heidelberg’s supervisory board and shareholders will be looking to see.
Rainer Hundsdörfer will take over as Heidelberg CEO on 14 November, just months after Gerold Linzbach announced he would leave the company at the termination of his contract in August next year. The search for his successor has however been faster than this period allowed for and having identified their man, Heidelberg’s supervisory board has moved swiftly.
