Klaus Engel, long-standing chief executive officer of Evonik, handed over to Christian Kullmann at the end of the annual shareholders’ meeting. In Essen’s Grugahalle Engel bid farewell to the shareholders. Werner Müller, chairman of the supervisory board, thanked Engel for his great service.
„You successfully led the company through the global financial and economic crisis and steered the development of Evonik from a conglomerate to one of the leading specialty chemical companies,” said Müller. “Today Evonik is excellently positioned – and the recent acquisition of Air Products specialty additives business, which you successfully managed in May 2016, contributed to that.”
Engel joined Evonik’s executive board in 2007 and has been its chairman since 2009. “Evonik has all the prerequisites to actively and successfully shape the future and to take advantage of attractive and sustainable growth prospects,” Engel said. “Therefore, I can leave Evonik in the hands of my successor with confidence.”
With a stable dividend of €1.15 per share, Evonik again generated a return for investors of more than four percent, measured by the closing stock price on December 31. Shareholders at the annual meeting approved the dividend proposal with almost 100 percent and endorsed the actions of the executive and supervisory boards with similar majorities.
Shareholders voted in favour of Aldo Belloni, chief executive officer of Linde AG, joining the supervisory board. Belloni will replace Haniel CEO Stephan Gemkow, who resigned his mandate at the annual shareholders’ meeting.
Source: Evonik
The future CEO of thyssenkrupp Uhde, Nadja Håkansson, has held various management positions at Siemens and Siemens Energy and looks back on over 18 years of national and international experience in the areas of supply chain management, operations, sales and corporate management.
Neste and South Korean company Lotte Chemical have partnered on a project to elevate the sustainability profile of chemicals and plastics. The partnership’s ambition is to replace fossil resources with renewable raw materials that offer a lower carbon footprint.
At least the confidence in the chemical sector has been seeing an upward trend and the trade balance is recovering as destocking seems to be coming to an end. Citing projections from the European Central Bank, CEFIC states that the level of inflation is expected to fall from 5.4% in 2023 to 2.3% in 2024.
