Klaus Kleinfeld

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Klaus Kleinfeld

Klaus Kleinfeld (born November 6, 1957 in Bremen, Germany) is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Siemens AG since 2005.

Kleinfeld received a master’s degree in business administration from Georg August University in Göttingen (Germany), and a doctorate from Julius Maximilian University in Würzburg (Germany). His dissertation was entitled “The Corporate Identity Concept from the Perspective of Strategic Management.” In 1982, he began work as a research assistant at the Institute of the Foundation for Empirical Social Research in Nuremberg (Germany). In 1986, he joined Ciba-Geigy in Basel (Switzerland), where he was a product manager in the Pharmaceutical Division..

Kleinfeld has worked for Siemens AG since 1987. His first position was in the company’s Corporate Sales and Marketing unit. He founded Siemens Management Consulting (SMC) in order to develop corporate revitalization and business improvement programs. SMC became a highly reputed profitable consulting business that established practices in benchmarking, turnaround management and innovation within the company. Kleinfeld led projects for several Siemens operating groups, including wireless communications, industry automation and power generation. He was also an architect of a company-wide initiative to increase competitiveness called top+. In 1998, he joined Siemens’ Medical Engineering Group (Med), where he headed the angiography, fluoroscopy and X-ray systems business headquartered in Forchheim. In April 2000, he was appointed to Med’s managing board in Erlangen.

In January 2001, Kleinfeld moved to the United States, where he served first as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and then – from 2002 to 2004 – as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Siemens USA. From Siemens headquarters in New York City. He restructured the company’s U.S. activities, which offer products in the medical, power generation and distribution, automation and control, lighting, information and communications, transportation and building technologies sectors. Kleinfeld has been a member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG since December 2002.

In January 2004, Klaus Kleinfeld was appointed to Siemens’ Corporate Executive Committee, where, for several months, he had special responsibility for the company’s Information and Communications business area as well as Siemens’ regional companies in Africa, the Middle East, Russia and the other countries of the C.I.S. He also headed Siemens’ corporate strategy department. Kleinfeld was appointed Vice President of Siemens AG in the middle of 2004 and Chief Executive Officer on January 27, 2005, succeeding Dr. Heinrich von Pierer. He is the 11th company head in Siemens’ 159-year history.

Under his leadership, the company's financially stricken mobile handset business, was sold for a negative charge to Taiwan’s BenQ in June 2005. Benq-Siemens declared bancruptcy of their German entity in 2006, threatening the loss of jobs of thousands of workers. This led to speculations that Siemens had sold the mobile business to avoid responsibility for its upcoming bankruptcy. At about the same time as the bankruptcy, Kleinfeld increased the salary of the Siemens Board of Directors by 30%.

Kleinfeld is a member of the board of directors of Alcoa Inc., of Bayer AG and of Citigroup Inc. He is also one of 53 advisory directors of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and belongs to the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum.

Kleinfeld, who is married and has two daughters, is considered to be a performance-oriented and pragmatic manager. He likes to wear a stainless steel Rolex watch and has run a number of marathons like the New York Marathon.