Bayer Supports International Competition for Upcoming Managers

Leverkusen, November 2009. Friedrich Foerster showed the greatest talent of all this year’s budding managers. The 27-year-old medical student from Heidelberg won the final of the "CEO of the Future 2009" career advancement contest held in Kitzbühel, Austria. Foerster gave the most convincing strategy presentation – based on a case study – to a panel of leading industry and media personalities that included Bayer CEO Werner Wenning.

Top Executives Chose "CEO of the Future"
Some 2,700 students and young professionals took part in the competition. Second place went to Florian Hürlimann (30), a mechanical engineering graduate from Zurich, and third was Savina Belcher (27), a business development manager from Berlin.

For Bayer and other leading European companies, the competition serves as a vehicle to promote international talent. The three prizewinners received cash prizes of 15,000, 10,000 and 5,000 euros respectively, which they can spend on education and training as they see fit. In addition, they will receive personal coaching from the CEO of a company – Friedrich Foerster will soon be getting an invitation from Werner Wenning. “We are particularly committed to promoting science and education,” Wenning commented. “We want to attract talented juniors to our company and support young people who have the potential to assume senior management responsibilities and take on challenging leadership assignments.”

In the case study that Bayer provided for the deciding round in Kitzbühel, the three candidates had to devise an optimal distribution structure to address developments in the German pharmaceuticals market. Questions set by other companies included: “How could you make one of Germany’s state-owned regional banks fit for privatization within three years?” and “How could you optimize an automaker’s components division?” Linking the case studies so closely to current economic themes provided an exciting challenge for the competitors. In earlier rounds, candidates had been given the chance to prove themselves as crisis managers of an imaginary auto supplier or garment manufacturer. As CEO, they were charged with preparing a 100-day crisis response program for their virtual company. These programs were then presented to shareholders at simulated supervisory board meetings.

In Kitzbühel, the twenty finalists presented to a panel of judges consisting of Vodafone Germany CEO Friedrich Joussen, Ergo Insurance Group CEO Torsten Oletzky, Credit Suisse Germany and Central Europe CEO Michael Rüdiger, Audi CEO Rupert Stadler, Bayer CEO Werner Wenning, McKinsey Germany CEO Frank Mattern and former McKinsey Europe CEO Herbert Henzler. The media sector was represented on the panel by Hans Demmel, CEO of current affairs broadcaster n-tv, Rüdiger Ditz, chief editor of Spiegel Online and Martin Noé, deputy chief editor of manager magazin.

Further details of the competition can be found at www.future-ceo.de.