Bochum, 22 April 2009 – In today’s Annual General Meeting the shareholders of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft elected Hartmut Eberlein into the Supervisory Board. Until this day he had served as Chief Financial Officer of GEA Group. He replaces Louis Graf von Zech who left the Supervisory Board at his own request. Dr. Jürgen Heraeus, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of GEA Group, and Jürg Oleas, Chairman of the Executive Board of GEA Group, thanked Hartmut Eberlein in their speeches for the extraordinary good and successful cooperation. Jürg Oleas stressed his strategic contributions to the Executive Board’s initiatives of the last 3 years and pointed out, that the 2008 record result was to no small extent also Eberlein’s achievement.

Dr. Helmut Schmale (52) has taken over as new Chief Financial Officer of GEA with the conclusion of this year’s Annual General Meeting. He has been with GEA since 1993, when he joined one of the subsidiaries of the Thermal Engineering Division as Finance Director. In 1997, he became Chief Financial Officer of the division and has been leading it as Division President since 2004, before becoming a Member of the Executive Board of GEA Group on April 1st, 2009.


GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft is one of the largest pure mechanical engineering groups in Germany. As an internationally operating technology group, it concentrates on specialty mechanical engineering with a focus on process technology and components. Group revenue amounted to EUR 5.2 billion in fiscal year 2008. The Group generated about 50 percent of this revenue from the high-growth food manufacturing and beverages industries. As of December 31, 2008, a workforce of over 21,000 employees served customers in 50 countries. GEA Group is a market and technology leader in 90 percent of its business areas. GEA Group is listed in the MDAX index (G1A, WKN 660200).