SAP AG announced the appointment of SAP Deputy CEO Léo Apotheker as the company's co-CEO alongside SAP CEO Henning Kagermann, effective immediately.
The decision was made at a regular meeting of the SAP Supervisory Board. With the decision, SAP is preparing another smooth management transition at the top of the company.
From on, Henning Kagermann and Léo Apotheker will jointly guide the future of the world's leading provider of business software.
The supervisory board also appointed to the SAP Executive Board three new members, effective July 1, 2008: Corporate Officers Erwin Gunst, Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe.
“Henning Kagermann requested that the supervisory board appoint Léo Apotheker as co-CEO in order to prepare him as successor in the best possible way during the remainder of Henning's tenure,” said Hasso Plattner, SAP co-founder and supervisory board chairman.
“The supervisory board followed his request. After years of massive investments and the successful launch of trendsetting innovations in the areas of service-oriented architecture, new solutions and business models for the midmarket, the use of main memory databases and modern analytics as well as state-of-the-art user interfaces, SAP now faces the task of boosting the application of these innovations among our customers and end users.
With Bill McDermott, Jim Hagemann Snabe and Erwin Gunst, three proven market experts will gain executive board functions.