voestalpine AG: Herbert Eibensteiner to take over as Chairman of the Management Board from Wolfgang Eder on July 3, 2019

voestalpine is interested in maintaining a high degree of stability not just with respect to the Company’s performance but also with respect to the changing of the guard. Wolfgang Eder will be succeeded on July 3, 2019, by Herbert Eibensteiner, graduate engineer (Diplomingenieur—Dipl.-Ing.), Head of the Steel Division and formerly Head of the Metal Forming Division. He knows voestalpine and its segments very well as a result.

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“From July 2019, voestalpine will be led by Herbert Eibensteiner, an internationally experienced top manager who has been with the Group for fully 30 years and has made crucial contributions to its success in recent years. I am pleased that, following intensive discussions on the Supervisory Board, we have found an internal solution in Mr. Eibensteiner and that the renewal of the other Management Board members’ contracts enables the demonstrably successful Management Board team to continue working for the Group until at least 2024. Whether Eibensteiner will run the Steel Division besides serving as Chairman of the Management Board will be decided in the current business year. In the long run, however, the Group’s current scale of operations will make it impossible to hold two positions simultaneously,” Lemppenau explains.

The designated CEO, Herbert Eibensteiner, 54 years old, is looking forward to his new responsibilities.

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Herbert Eibensteiner is a highly qualified and experienced manager who was born in Linz, Austria, in 1963. He has had a long and international career, has been working for voestalpine since 1989, and thus knows the ins and outs of the Company’s business.  He has been a member of the Management Board of voestalpine AG since 2012 and, in addition, has also been managing the Steel Division, the Group’s highest revenue earning division, since October 2014. Eibensteiner graduated from the Vienna University of Technology in 1988 with a degree in mechanical engineering and business management. In 1989, he started to work for the voestalpine Group as a plant engineer responsible for maintenance. From 1993 to 2000, he served as executive in Cold Rolling Mill Maintenance, Quality Management, Workplace Safety, and Environmental Protection. From 2000 until 2014, Eibensteiner held several management positions in the Metal Forming Division, and most recently he was responsible for managing the entire division in his capacity as member of the Management Board of voestalpine AG. As Head of the Metal Forming Division, he played a major role in the accelerated internationalization of the Automotive segment. 

During his tenure as Head of the Steel Division, which specializes in high-quality flat steel products—incidentally, another position where he succeeded Wolfgang Eder—, the opening of the direct reduction plant in Corpus Christi, Texas (USA) in 2016 marked another milestone in the implementation of the Group’s international growth strategy. This most advanced plant of its kind supplies the Austrian voestalpine sites with top-quality pre-materials for steel production, ensuring their long-term viability. In recent years, Eibensteiner has provided far-reaching momentum at the Steel Division headquarters in Linz, where more than EUR 1 billion has been invested since 2014. For example, the technological basis for the next few years is currently being laid by renovating blast furnace A, starting up a new continuous casting line and building a hydrogen pilot plant. Herbert Eibensteiner has also been one of the Vice Presidents of the European Steel Association (EUROFER) since 2014.

At the time his contract expires in 2019, Wolfgang Eder will have worked for the Group for more than 41 years—24 of which on the Management Board—and will have stood at the helm of voestalpine for 15 years.

Joachim Lemppenau, born in 1942 and member of the Supervisory Board of voestalpine since 1999, also made a decision regarding his own future. “I think that 2021 will be the right time, after 17 years, to hand off the management of voestalpine’s Supervisory Board to someone else. I am very pleased that Mr. Eder will stand for election to the Supervisory Board at the Annual General Meeting 2019 and that he has also declared his willingness, if he is elected and if his future co-members of the Supervisory Board agree, to take over the chairmanship of the Supervisory Board two years later. The full Supervisory Board stands behind these considerations and believes that Mr. Eder is very well suited for this position.”

Eder looks forward to his last year as the CEO and his tenure as a member of the Supervisory Board with confidence:

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The Supervisory Board of voestalpine AG today also renewed the contracts of the other members of the Management Board for five more years. As a result, Franz Kainersdorfer, Robert Ottel, Franz Rotter, and Peter Schwab will continue to serve in their spheres of responsibility for another term of office until March 31, 2024.  Franz Kainersdorfer, born in Leoben, Austria, was appointed to the Management Board of voestalpine AG in 2011 and is the Head of the Metal Engineering Division.  Robert Ottel, the Vienna-born CFO, was appointed to the Management Board of voestalpine AG in 2004 and has steered the Group’s finances since 2005. Franz Rotter hails from Austria’s state of Styria and has been a member of the Management Board since 2011, too; he heads the High Performance Metals Division. Peter Schwab, born in Upper Austria, was appointed to the Management Board of voestalpine AG in 2014 and has been the Head of the Group’s Metal Forming Division since then.