Press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA) has announced that Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann, its president and CEO, will hand his financial remit to Helge Hansen, a banker and business economist.
KBA says that, along with the rest of the press engineering industry, it has experienced a collapse in sales over the past year in the wake of the global financial and economic meltdown. Its appointment of Hansen as the new executive vice-president for finances (CFO) comes in response to the mounting challenges posed by risk management, financial dealings with banks, and customer financing.Hansen, who was appointed managing director of Metronic AG (now KBA-Metronic) in July 2003, successfully restructured the company following its acquisition by KBA in 2004.
When Bolza-Schünemann was appointed president and CEO of KBA in June 2003, finances were added to his existing responsibilities of product development and human resources at KBA’s sheetfed operation in Radebeul, near Dresden. The company says that transferring his financial remit will give him more time to focus on the long-term strategic realignment of the entire KBA group in the international marketplace. This will entail a consolidation of the sheetfed division, which has been particularly hard hit by the global crisis.
Helge Hansen has spent his entire career in finance. He first came into contact with KBA In June 2003, when he was appointed managing director of what was later to become KBA-Metronic. Prior to that, at the request of the lending banks he had successfully turned around a number of stricken businesses in the print media, construction and service sectors.
