Cor Boonstra

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Cor Boonstra (1986)

Cornelis "Cor" Boonstra (born January 7, 1938 in Leeuwarden ) is a Dutch manager who was CEO of Philips from 1996 to 2001 .

Life

Boonstra left secondary school at the age of 16, went to sea, was a market seller and began training at Unilever from 1955 . There he became president of the Dutch dairy subsidiary Zuivel Handel Maatschaapij in 1966. From 1974 he was with Sara Lee , where he was initially manager and from 1978 president of the Dutch subsidiary Erdal (including shoe polish, later Intradal). After taking over Douwe-Egberts (DE, coffee, tobacco, food) in 1978, it became Sara Lee / DE, where he became CEO in 1984. In 1989 Van Nelle was taken over. He stayed with Sara Lee until 1993.

In 1994 he joined the board of directors of Philips at the invitation of the chairman of the board, Jan Timmer , and in 1996 he became CEO of Timmer. At Philips, he was responsible for the Let's make things better campaign and, during his time as CEO, took a tough restructuring course, which, however, also quintupled the market value. Polygram was sold and the headquarters moved from Eindhoven to Amsterdam.

In 2000 he received the Dutch management award Topman van het Jaar from Managers Netwerk Nederland and the magazines FEM Business and Managersonline.

His wife Hansje Raatjes-Boonstra narrowly escaped kidnapping in 1998 and was seriously injured. After his time at Philips, he was charged with insider trading, once with Ahold shares and once with Endemol shares, where his girlfriend at the time, the Dutch top manager Sylvia Tóth , sat on the supervisory board. He was fined for trading in Ahold shares and finally acquitted in 2004 in the Endemol case. He is the majority shareholder and chairman of Koop Holding Europe in Groningen.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helmut Hetzel, Die Welt, November 17, 1998