Markus Beyrer to oversee restructuring at Austria Post
Austria Post elected a new chairman for its supervisory board today, as it held its latest Annual General Meeting in Vienna. Markus Beyrer is a former economics advisor to Austria’s former Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, and joins Markus Pichler and Elisabeth Stadler as new members of the Supervisory Board following the resignation of Peter Michaelis, Gerhard Roiss and Karl Stoss.
Beyrer has been an Austrian trade attache to the European Union as well as economics advisor to the Austrian Vice-Chancellor and Chancellor.
A graduate of the University of Vienna and the Vienna University of Economics and Business, since 2004 he has been general secretary (executive managing director) at the Federation of Austrian Industrialists.
Beyrer is due to take over from Dr Michaelis as chief executive of the Austrian state investment and privatisation agency, Österreichische Industrie Holding AG, from July.
Pichler is another graduate of the Vienna University of Economics and Business, who started his career with Procter & Gamble, after which a stint in California as an executive vice president at Red Bull led to various positions at McDonalds Corporation. Since 2008, Pichler has worked as Austrian managing director for commercial property firm Unibail Rodamco.
Stadler is currently chairman of the executive board insurance firm ERGO Austria International, having previously taken board memberships at insurance firm Raiffeisen Versicherung, and two subsidiaries of the insurance firm UNIQA Group Austria. Stadler has a background in risk management as an actuarian mathematics graduate of Vienna’s University of Technology and is a fully certified actuary.
Restructuring
Last month, Austrian Post’s Supervisory Board made the decision to appoint two internal candidates – Walter Hitziger and Walter Oblin to leading roles in a restructured management board.
Current mail division director Hitziger is to take charge of a merged mail and retail division from December. Oblin will succeed Rudolf Jettmar as chief financial officer from July 2012.
Austrian Post CEO Georg Pölzl presented his company’s latest results to the board today. As revealed last month, the company achieved a slight dip in revenues overall, with its mail division dealing with ongoing volume reductions. However, Austrian Post’s booming parcels division boosted the company’s overall profits to a 48.5% increase year-on-year.
For 2011, the Austria Post board is expecting continuing trends for electronic substitution of letter mail, leading to a 3-5% decline in letter mail volumes, while it said parcel and logistics operations are set to see growth above 6% this year.
During today’s annual general meeting the company’s management board approved a dividend of EUR 1.60 per share, to be paid on May 12.
