Tag: USA

Deutsche Post World Net CEO Klaus Zumwinkel likes to point out to visitors that he can see no fewer than three ancient castles from his office atop the company’s ultramodern new headquarters in Bonn. But when it comes to reach and influence, the old German barons had nothing on Zumwinkel.

Other German business titans, such as Ron Sommer of Deutsche Telekom or Henning Schulte-Noelle of insurer Allianz, were ousted after their grand strategies went awry. Zumwinkel is still unassailable after 13 years at the top of Deutsche Post, the German postal service. The company is still majority owned by the government and still delivers the mail, but under Zumwinkel, it also has become a profitable, publicly listed multinational with annual sales of $46 billion and the largest express-delivery business in Europe and Asia. “We want to be the leading logistics company in the world,” declares Zumwinkel, who also sits on the supervisory boards of Deutsche Telekom and Lufthansa, and who counts German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder among his friends.