Board revamp at Koenig & Bauer

Koenig & Bauer: chief operating officer added to main board
Koenig & Bauer: chief operating officer added to main board

Koenig & Bauer’s supervisory board has revamped its leadership team in a move that sees the creation of a new main board role and the departure of CFO Mathias Dähn.

The German press manufacturing group has announced that Dähn, who has been CFO for six years, will leave at the end of this month by mutual agreement. His successor Dr Stephen Kimmich will take over the CFO role on 15 April.

The group’s supervisory board thanked Dähn for his “outstanding work” in the realignment and turnaround of Koenig & Bauer since 2014.

Kimmich joins K&B from Joyson Safety Systems where he held the equivalent role. Prior to that he spent 18 years at automotive parts maker Takata.

The main board is also being beefed up with the appointment of Michael Ulverich to the new position of chief operating officer. He was most recently managing director and COO at defence equipment company Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann.

Ulverich is tasked with overseeing materials management, purchasing, logistics and K&B’s ‘industrial' production companies in Würzburg and Radebeul as well as the subsidiary in Frankenthal.

In addition, long-standing director for sheetfed business segment Ralf Sammeck has been given additional responsibility to take over “the group-wide coordination of the digital transformation” in addition to his existing role.

In its year-end results published last month, K&B said its core markets were “fundamentally intact” despite the understandable uncertainty caused by the corona crisis.

The €1.22bn (£1.1bn) turnover group's other main board members are CEO Claus Bolza-Schünemann, director for digital and webfed segment Christoph Müller, and director for special segment presses Andreas Pleßke.

Shares in K&B have risen from €17.23 to €19.90 since the end of last week.