BRAIN AG appoints experienced corporate finance specialist to the Board of Management

The creation or expansion of direct ways to access the B2B market as well as the establishment or extension of sales expertise are building blocks intended to promote the company’s industrialization strategy and to tap growth opportunities in the BioIndustrial B2B product business. Besides the group’s M&A activities, Frank Goebel will also take over responsibility for corporate investment management, i.e. the management of the BRAIN Group’s subsidiaries, in order to facilitate an interconnection of the various subsidiaries’ management and thus make even more use of the synergy potentials within the corporate portfolio. “I am eagerly anticipating this exciting new challenge. In the past two years, I have already been able to gain a comprehensive view of the company, and I do see a clear potential for growth. In future, I would like to cooperate even more closely with our subsidiaries in order to continuously expand the industrialization of the BRAIN Group,” says Frank Goebel, designated member of BRAIN AG’s Board of Management. Adds Dr Jürgen Eck, CEO of BRAN AG: “I am looking forward to working together with Frank Goebel, with whom the Board of Management and I have cooperated in a very trusting and efficient manner in the past.”

Eric Marks (55), the enzyme specialist and corporate COO, will leave the Board of Management as of 31 October 2016 for personal reasons and at his own request. Says Dr Jürgen Eck, CEO of BRAIN AG: “On behalf of the entire BRAIN team, I would like to express my thanks for the close and trustful cooperation. We regret Eric Marks’s resignation from the Board of Management, but respect his decision. Eric Marks has rendered valuable services to the company when it came to the successful marketing and sales of products. On the basis created by Mr Marks and making good use of the industrial network expanded by his efforts, we will continue to further drive product development and sales in close cooperation with the managing directors of the companies in the BRAIN Group, thus further growing BRAIN’s BioIndiustrial segment as scheduled. The forming of strategic industrial partnerships with manufacturers and consumer goods companies, such as the one recently formed with Roquette in the field of natural sweeteners (DOLCE programme) will gain in importance as regards product-related business development and as well as the manufacturing and sale of products in the B2B business.

The position of Dr Georg Kellinghusen, whose time on the Board of Manangement was originally limited to 31 December 2016, has been prolonged until the end of the ordinary shareholders’ meeting scheduled for the end of March 2017, in order to finalize the business year 2015/16 properly. Afterwards, Frank Goebel will also take over CFO responsibility from Dr Kellinghusen.

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Frank Goebel joined the BRAIN Group as managing director of the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary B.R.A.I.N. Capital GmbH in February 2015 to support BRAIN’s industrialisation strategy. Frank Goebel has a diploma in business administration and completed all three levels of the CFA programme. Before joining BRAIN, Frank Goebel spent 15 years in banking in the Structured Finance area, the last ten years at the Royal Bank of Scotland plc. working out of Frankfurt and London. During his earlier years in banking he focused on LBOs backed by Financial Sponsors, working on widely syndicated arranging mandates. For the last six years he became involved with financial restructuring transactions such as debt–for–equity swaps, acting as an Investment Director on a Pan–European basis. In his early career, Frank Goebel worked as a controller in a German industrial company as well as in his father’s trading business.