Heinrich von Pierer

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Heinrich von Pierer (born January 26, 1941 in Erlangen ; actually Heinrich Karl Friedrich Eduard Pierer von Esch ) is a German manager . From 1992 to 2005 he was CEO and from 2005 to April 25, 2007 Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens AG .

Heinrich von Pierer (1994)

Life

Heinrich von Pierer attended the Fridericianum grammar school in Erlangen and then studied law and economics at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen and Nuremberg. In 1968 he received his doctoral thesis Partially invalid legal transactions: The relationship between the will of the party and the legal principle in the area of ​​Section 139 BGB to Dr. jur. PhD . He then obtained the academic degree of Dipl.-Volkswirt .

In 1969, von Pierer began his career at Siemens AG. In 1989 he became a member of the company's board of directors. On October 1, 1992, he succeeded Karlheinz Kaske as chairman of the board. On July 7, 2004, Siemens announced the appointment of Klaus Kleinfeld to succeed Pierers from January 2005. Von Pierer took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board on January 27, 2005 .

Von Pierer held various other supervisory board mandates, including at Bayer , Hochtief, Munich Re and Volkswagen . From 1993 to 2006 he was chairman of the then newly founded Asia-Pacific Committee of German Business (APA) . From 1972 to 1990 he was for the CSU in the city council of Erlangen. He was also active on the administrative board of the Technical University of Munich from 1998 to 2005 .

On August 29, 2005, the CDU announced his appointment as chief economic policy advisor to Chancellor candidate Angela Merkel . Von Pierer headed the Council for Innovation and Growth . The CSU member thus continued his function as an advisor to the federal government. Even in the Schröder era he was a member of the red-green initiative Partners for Innovation .

As a consultant, he formulated a formula for innovation: "Knowledge of customer needs plus inspiration multiplied by staying power plus perspiration equals market success."

On January 13, 2006 Pierer was appointed honorary professor at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg for the subject of business administration, in particular industrial management, of the economic and social science faculty.

On April 19, 2007, von Pierer announced his resignation as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens AG; He thus made his office available at the beginning of the Supervisory Board meeting on April 25, 2007. He said the decision was not related to the bribes affair , but was in the interests of the company and employees. In fact, the public pressure was probably too great because of the "bribe affair".

In the course of coming to terms with the bribe scandal, Pierers' reputation has suffered greatly. Pierers' successor was Gerhard Cromme , Chairman of the Supervisory Board of ThyssenKrupp and, at the time of his appointment, Chairman of the Audit Committee of the Supervisory Board of Siemens AG.

On May 20, 2008, von Pierer announced his resignation as a member of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank AG.

Von Pierer is a member of the supervisory board of the Turkish conglomerate Koç Holding .

He also works as an independent management consultant.

On January 17, 2011 - shortly before his 70th birthday - von Pierer presented his autobiography with the title Summit Storms to the public.

He has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Serafin Group in Munich since 2016 .

criticism

By taking over the chairmanship of the supervisory board of Siemens AG, von Pierer violated the corporate governance code , according to which the direct transfer of a chairman to the supervisory board should not take place. While this was initially accepted almost without contradiction, the problem came to light in the course of the corruption scandal at Siemens : Von Pierer was a member of the audit committee on the supervisory board, which investigates the corruption allegations and of course also examines Pierer's term of office. Due to the apparent conflict of interest and the fact that much of the affair fell during his time as CEO, Pierer faced numerous allegations. At the 2007 Annual General Meeting of Siemens AG on January 25, 2007, von Pierer finally decided not to continue participating in meetings that dealt with the issue of corruption; He did not want to leave the office of chairman of the supervisory board. The general meeting voted with over 34 percent against the discharge of Pierers and thus clearly showed the dissatisfaction with the decision of Pierers.

Despite the corruption affair at Siemens, the CDU and especially Angela Merkel held on to von Pierer for a long time as head of the Council for Innovation and Growth ; on April 17, 2008, however, the Chancellor declared her intention to renounce Heinrich von Pierer in this function. This happened at the same time as the publication of an internal test report of April 1, 2008, which was made public on April 18 by the Süddeutsche Zeitung . A Siemens manager has linked Pierer with a government contract in Argentina, which was obtained through bribe payments. The public prosecutor's office then started preliminary investigations . Instead of criminal proceedings against von Pierer, administrative offense proceedings were opened in May for breach of duty of supervision . At the beginning of 2010 this was ended with a fine that Pierer accepted.

Pierer agreed with the Siemens Group on a compensation payment of five million euros.

On December 2, 2019, a Greek court in Athens sentenced Pierer to 15 years imprisonment after a trial that had been ongoing since 2017. Von Pierer's attorney announced an appeal against the verdict.

Personal life, family and name

Von Pierer is married and has three children and three grandchildren. At the age of 18 he won the Bavarian youth tennis championships.

His grandfather, the Austro-Hungarian field marshal lieutenant Eduard Pierer , acquired a title of nobility in 1900 by paying 280 Austrian crowns and added the maiden name of his wife after the "von", so that the family name was now "Pierer von Esch". All Austrian nobility titles were abolished by the Republic of Austria in 1919, but Pierer's father Leo (1895–1992) moved from Austria to Germany in 1937 and regained the title of nobility in 1938 when he was naturalized. Pierer himself usually abbreviates his full name as "von Pierer".

honors and awards

Works

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interview: Our universities are better than their reputation ( memento of August 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Tagesspiegel of October 26, 2004.
  2. ↑ Von Pierer falls deep. In: handelsblatt.com . April 20, 2007, accessed February 16, 2015 .
  3. ↑ press release
  4. ↑ Dinah Deckstein: Board member: Pierer gets control job in Turkey. In: Spiegel Online . February 13, 2008, accessed February 16, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Business consultancy Pierer Consulting. Retrieved June 17, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Summiteer - Heinrich von Pierer describes his rise and fall. Retrieved February 16, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Die Zeit : Is Siemens suing all ex-board members? , April 18, 2008.
  8. ^ Der Spiegel : New report incriminates Pierer , April 26, 2008.
  9. ↑ Spiegel Online : Public prosecutor's office targets Pierer , April 26, 2008.
  10. ↑ a b FAZ.net : For Pierer, the corruption affair ends with a fine on March 24, 2010.
  11. ^ Sueddeutsche.de : Pierer pays five million euros to Siemens , May 17, 2010.
  12. ^ Christiane Schlötzer, Tasos Telloglou: Ex-Siemens boss Pierer sentenced to long imprisonment. Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 2, 2019, accessed on December 5, 2019 .
  13. ↑ welt.de: The bought nobility of Heinrich von Pierer , August 25, 2008.
  14. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)
  15. ↑ Heinrich v. Pierer is the first German to receive honorary citizenship in Singapore , March 2, 2007 (accessed December 28, 2007)
personal data
SURNAME Pierer, Heinrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Esch, Heinrich Pierer from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German manager
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH gain