Munich Sanjiv Lamba once said of himself: “I’m always hungry.” Even if the Indian in his favorite city of Munich likes to go to an Italian or an Asian, he didn’t mean the food.
The Calcutta-born manager is hungry for advancement, success and permanent improvement. It was always clear to him that he wanted to become CEO of a large company one day.
At least that is what Lamba has now achieved: The Linde Board appointed him on Monday to succeed Steve Angel as the new CEO. He will take office on March 1, 2022. Internally, Lamba has already made it clear that he wants to continue Angel’s performance culture – but also wants to write a growth story.
Lamba had already assumed responsibility for day-to-day business as Chief Operating Officer and was considered the Crown Prince for Angel’s successor. As the successor to the chairman of the board, Wolfgang Reitzle, he will now lead the board, which is a kind of administrative or supervisory board.
Internally, Lamba is considered a good choice for a number of reasons. He worked for the British gases company BOC when it was taken over by Linde in 2006. “He had already gone through an integration when Linde and Praxair merged,” says an insider. The group has benefited from this experience.
Unpretentious and communicative manner
In addition, Lamba is popular on both sides of the Atlantic because of its unpretentious and communicative nature. As a former financier, he also knows his way around the numbers side. This is important at Linde, after all, the new group has adopted the profit-driven performance culture of the merger partner Praxair.
As a converter between the worlds, Lamba can mediate well on both sides of the continent. He lived with his family in Singapore for a long time before they moved to the Danbury area. He commuted regularly between Bavaria, the USA and Asia. In Munich it took him some time to get used to it, but then he made important friendships.
With his passion for cricket, he had encountered a certain perplexity among his colleagues in the USA as in Germany. But Indians, Lamba is supposed to have once said, can also adapt well to other cultures. He is now not only a Formula 1 expert, but also a passionate FC Bayern fan.
It will be a challenge for Lamba to build on the success of Angels. The American had continuously improved margins even during the corona crisis. The expectations for the current year have already been raised twice. Linde now expects a profit of at least 5.3 billion euros.
“I am very honored to lead this extraordinary company into the future,” said Lamba after his appointment. He wants to continue the high-performance culture and create additional value for the shareholders.
Sustainability goals and growth opportunities
Angel and Reitzle received a lot of semi-final praise for the future CEO. Angel said he was looking forward to working with Lamba. Under the new CEO, the Dax Group will aggressively implement the new sustainability goals and open up the many growth opportunities.
Wolfgang Reitzle said with a view to the future group management: “Linde could not be in better hands.”
On the board – the CEO belongs to this body at Linde plc – Lamba will also meet another top manager from Munich: Ex-Siemens boss Joe Kaeser will move into the board of directors. Kaeser also heads the Siemens Energy Supervisory Board. There, in turn, Christian Bruch is CEO, whom Lamba knows very well from their time together at Linde.
Three years ago, Angel and Reitzle initiated the merger of Linde and Praxair to form the world’s largest gas manufacturer and then carried out the integration largely silently. So far, the merger has also been a success story on the stock exchange. Linde rose to become the second most valuable DAX group.
Lamba started his career in 1989 with the gases specialist BOC in India. When this was taken over by Linde, Lamba continued his career seamlessly at the German group and rose to the board of directors. Internally, the successful expansion of the Asian business is mainly due to him.
Sporting challenges
At Linde, there are definitely sporting challenges waiting for Lamba. Reitzle had given as the task for the next boss: “You need performance plus creative growth.”
On the one hand, this means that profitability should be further improved. Here Lamba will pick up where Angel left off. Linde checks the figures every month, right down to the smallest ramifications – if necessary, countermeasures are taken immediately.
But they know at Linde that the screws of the margin cannot be turned any further. The group needs growth prospects in order to remain the darling of the capital markets. Above all, hydrogen is the magic word here.
Linde is already the world’s largest manufacturer of hydrogen for industry. In the future, the area of “green energy” – especially green hydrogen – is to play a central role. In an interview with the Handelsblatt, Angel announced that hydrogen sales were to be quadrupled in the long term, from around two billion dollars.
A turning point for Linde is the announced change, also because of Wolfgang Reitzle’s subsequent withdrawal. In his various functions, he led Linde “courageously and entrepreneurially in the best sense of the word,” said Andreas Föller, founder of the Comites personnel consultancy, the Handelsblatt.
A multicompany without a clear focus has become a global market leader in industrial gases. Sanjiv Lamba must now ensure that this focus is not lost.
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