Kuhlmann should play a key role at Christ.
(Photo: Christ&Company)
Berlin Andreas Kuhlmann will take on a new role as of July 1: the long-standing head of the German Energy Agency (Dena) will become managing director of the consulting firm Christ & Company.
The qualified physicist will hold the position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Operating Officer (COO) at the Berlin company. This was confirmed by company founder Harald Christ to the Handelsblatt.
Christ told the Handelsblatt that Kuhlmann will advise companies on the implementation of their climate protection projects and will also be responsible for the topics of energy and circular economy as well as sustainability. In addition to providing strategic advice to companies, Christ & Company, together with Kuhlmann, will also focus on the fast-growing market for investments in the clean-tech sector.
“Christ & Company is both a consulting firm and an investor,” said Christ. “For some mandates, the focus is on advice, while others offer investment opportunities. And sometimes both come together,” he added. His goal is “to become even more entrepreneurial with Christ & Company”.
Christ said that the transformation to climate neutrality can only be achieved “if we help young companies to get their ideas ready for the market”. Christ & Company wants to face this challenge. Kuhlmann plays a key role in this.
No successor for Kuhlmann yet
Christ only made a name for himself in May when the US group “Service Now” bought the German AI start-up “G2K”. Christ & Company previously held a 20 percent stake in G2K and is said to have earned a low three-digit million amount from the deal. Christ does not confirm the number.
Kuhlmann is expected to have his last day at Dena on June 14th.
(Photo: dpa)
Kuhlmann headed Dena for eight years. The agency sees itself as a “competence center for applied energy transition and climate protection”. Under Kuhlmann’s aegis, the number of Dena employees rose from almost 200 to around 500.
During Kuhlmann’s time as Managing Director, Dena set standards with the “Integrated Energy Transition Lead Study”, in which the agency developed strategies for achieving climate goals together with over 60 partners from business and science.
In addition, the topics of digitization and innovation moved into the focus of the work. The start-up festival for the energy transition initiated by Dena is now attracting international attention.
In September last year it became known that Kuhlmann, 55, was leaving Dena. Dena belongs to the federal government and the KfW development bank. The election of Michael Schäfer as Kuhlmann’s successor triggered a political uproar after it emerged that Schäfer was the best man of Patrick Graichen, Secretary of State for Economic Affairs who was involved in the selection process. Graichen had kept quiet about this fact for a long time.
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Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) later separated from Graichen. The search for a successor to Kuhlmann began again. The process is not yet complete.
Kuhlmann’s professional career began in 1995 at the Institute for Environmental Physics at the Ruprecht Karls University in Heidelberg. This was followed by various positions in the political environment, including as office manager for the former SPD leader Franz Müntefering.
From September 2020 to April 2022, Christ was Federal Treasurer of the FDP.
(Photo: imago images/Mike Schmidt)
He later moved to the Federal Association of Energy and Water Management (BDEW). In July 2015 he became Chairman of the Dena Management Board. June 14 is his last day at Dena.
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Harald Christ has merged the consulting business and his investment company into Christ & Company. Christ, born in 1972, can look back on a varied and financially very profitable career. At the age of 25, the trained industrial clerk was the district director of a building society for the first time. Christ recently told Business Insider that he earned his first million before he was 30.
From 2002 to 2007 he was CEO and shareholder of a Hamburg shipping company, later he was on the board of WestLB responsible for business with wealthy private customers, head of Berliner Weberbank and divisional director of Postbank AG. His last group position was chairman of the board of Ergoberatung und Vertrieb AG before he left in 2017.
Christ was a member of the SPD for decades, and the best contacts in the party date from this period. In 2019 he left the SPD, which he justified with a “shift to the left”. From September 2020 to April 2022 he was Federal Treasurer of the FDP.
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