The manager takes over the top position at Fresenius Medical Care.
(Photo: Philips)
Frankfurt She worked for the medical technology group Philips in Boston in the USA for a number of years until 2020: From January next year, Carla Kriwet will manage the dialysis group Fresenius Medical Care at its North American headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, just a few miles further west. Late on Tuesday evening, the Dax company announced the appointment of the 51-year-old German.
The experienced manager will replace CEO Rice Powell, who has been in office since 2013, who will be 67 this year and whose contract expires at the end of the year due to the age limit applicable to the Management Board. Alongside Merck boss Belén Garijo, Kriwet is the second woman to currently run a Dax group.
Just last week, Kriwet surprisingly left the top post of Europe’s largest household appliance manufacturer BSH after less than two years “for personal reasons” and to take on a new challenge. This was announced by the manufacturer belonging to the Bosch Group.
It is now clear that the new task is the management of Fresenius Medical Care – indeed a challenge for the experienced manager. Because the world’s largest dialysis group, which belongs to the Bad Homburg health group Fresenius, has lost momentum in recent years and recently had to withdraw its forecasts. Important market developments such as the trend towards home dialysis were not recognized until late.
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In addition, an above-average number of dialysis patients died as a result of the infection during the corona pandemic, which had a negative impact on Fresenius Medical Care’s business. Last year, the Dax group posted a drop in earnings of around a quarter to around one billion euros with sales of around 17.6 billion euros.
The company is therefore currently taking countermeasures with the largest restructuring in its 25-year history. The operating model, previously based on four world regions, has been streamlined and divided into a global service business and a product business. 5,000 jobs are to be cut worldwide, of which between 500 and 750 are in Germany. With the new structure, Fresenius Medical Care should become faster, more powerful and also more digital.
These are topics that Carla Kriwet is familiar with, since in the more than seven years at the Dutch Philips Group she was also responsible for digital innovations and patient monitoring, among other things, and headed the Connected Care division for three years until 2020. Medical care through networking and making technology better is very important to her. She made that clear in an interview with the Handelsblatt at the time.
Kriwet wants to design. In order to get ahead, the daughter of the former Thyssen boss Heinz Kriwet also changed her employer more often. The doctor of business administration and mother of three children worked at ABB, Daimler Transportation, Boston Consulting, Linde and Drägerwerk before Philips. The chemistry wasn’t always right: Drägerwerk, for example, left as Sales Director after just eleven months.
Like Rice Powell, Kriwet will also become a member of the Management Board of Fresenius Management SE. Helen Giza, Chief Financial Officer of Fresenius Medical Care, will extend her contract for an additional five years and assume the role of Vice President of the Management Board in addition to her roles as CFO and Chief Transformation Officer.
For the employees of Fresenius Medical Care, whose board and business have been American-dominated for years, the election of a German top manager could be a positive sign. An opportunity to strengthen the connection to the roots of the company with the important production sites in Germany.
More: Fresenius Medical Care will cut 5,000 jobs when it is reorganized