Clariant, a focused, sustainable, and innovative specialty chemical company, today announced changes to its leadership and organizational structure as part of the company’s ongoing initiatives to implement its purpose-led strategy and cultural transformation. The new operating model allows Clariant to position itself for long-term sustainable growth while remaining committed to its strategic priorities, focusing on customers, innovation, sustainability, and people. Clariant also revealed its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) roadmap with a focus on gender equality, an inclusive culture and cultural identity.
As part of the reorganization, Clariant will slim down the number of Business Units (“BU”) from five to three and locate the BU Presidents in the regions with the largest customer base and highest growth potential for the respective businesses. It will also create a new Executive Steering Committee that will include the CEO, the CFO and the Presidents of the new Business Units, who will have full P&L responsibility. The new structure will enable Clariant to reduce hierarchical layers and overall complexity across its business functions. It is expected to foster greater accountability, speed up decision-making processes and enhance customer proximity, while strengthening diversity.
“Clariant has undergone a successful portfolio change in recent years and is now a true specialty chemicals company. Now is the right time to align the organization more closely to customers, businesses and markets. The new setup will further strengthen our position as a leader in sustainability and establish a best-in-class governance,” said Günter von Au, Chairman of the Board of Clariant.
“With our new operating model and cultural transformation, we will foster better customer orientation, greater empowerment, accountability and transparency and take a new approach to leadership development promoting an inclusive and diverse culture – thereby securing Clariant’s position to achieve its 2025 targets, in line with our purpose-led strategy,” said Conrad Keijzer, Clariant’s Chief Executive Officer.
Clariant will combine its existing BU Catalysts and Business Line Biofuels & Derivatives into one single BU called “Catalysts”, Functional Minerals and Additives into “Adsorbents & Additives”, and Industrial and Consumer Specialties and Oil and Mining Services into “Care Chemicals”. The reorganization has no impact on the financial reporting by Business Area within the current fiscal year.
The new businesses will be headed by newly appointed BU Presidents Angela Cackovich, Jens Cuntze, and Christian Vang. By being located in their biggest growth regions, they will further increase their customer proximity.
Angela Cackovich will be the newly appointed President, of the BU Adsorbents & Additives and the EMEA region. She will join Clariant`s Executive Steering Committee from Tesa, where she was a member of the Executive Committee. She gained significant industry experience in several positions, including at Henkel, Celanese, Rohm & Haas as well as Dow Corning and Hoechst. As a German citizen she holds a master’s degree in chemical engineering.
With almost 20 years at Clariant, Jens Cuntze has extensive experience within the company. He will become President, of the BU Catalysts and the Asia-Pacific region. Previously, he was Head of Corporate Planning & Strategy after serving in various leadership roles including Head of Petrochemical Catalysts and Head of Procurement. He holds a Diploma and PhD in Chemistry from ETH Zurich and is German.
Christian Vang will become President, of the BU Care Chemicals and the Americas region. He has more than 14 years of leadership experience within Clariant. His latest positions included Head of BU Industrial and Consumer Specialties and Head of Corporate Planning & Strategy. Prior to joining Clariant in 2008, Christian worked in leading positions at Siegwerk, SICPA and Hempel. He holds degrees from Harvard, Insead and London Business School, and is a Danish national.
With the elimination of the Chief Transformation Officer (CTO) and Chief Operating Officer (COO) roles, the new structure enables direct reporting lines of Clariant’s BUs to the CEO. As a consequence of the new structure, Hans Bohnen, Chief Operating Officer, and Bernd Hoegemann, Chief Transformation Officer, have decided to step down from their current roles in the Executive Committee and will pursue their career outside the company. “We are very grateful to Bernd and Hans for their very valuable contributions in various leadership positions at Clariant. I wish them the very best for the future,” said Conrad Keijzer.
Clariant will ensure additional transparency and accountability by moving away from its current structure of an Executive Committee with a sole oversight and review role. Instead, the Company will have a new Executive Steering Committee that will include CEO Conrad Keijzer, CFO Bill Collins as well as the three BU Presidents effective July 1st, 2022.
Together with Chief Human Resources Officer Tatiana Berardinelli, General Counsel Alfred Muench, newly appointed Chief Corporate Development Officer Chris Hansen, and Chief Technology & Sustainability Officer Richard Haldimann, the Executive Steering Committee will form the Executive Leadership Team. By bringing all key functions together when it comes to important strategic decisions, Clariant will speed up decision making, strengthen its governance and increase accountability.
To complement the structural changes by a diversity-based culture, Clariant also launched its DE&I roadmap. It is an essential part of Clariant’s new purpose-led strategy, aimed at building a more diverse, equitable and inclusive future by focusing on gender equality, an inclusive culture and cultural identity. For each of these areas, Clariant has set ambitious targets for 2030 that are accompanied by a variety of concrete actions.
In terms of gender equality, Clariant strives to provide equal opportunities for all genders with a special focus on strengthening the gender balance at the management level by doubling the current female representation to at least 30% by 2030. When it comes to cultural identity, Clariant wants to provide equal access to career development for all ethnicities and ensure that the business footprint is reflected in the company’s leadership. To reflect Clariant’s global setup, the organization strives to increase the share of leaders with national origin outside of Europe from currently 32% to more than 40% by 2030.
The transformation of Clariant’s structure and culture will help the Company to bring its core businesses to their full potential and fully leverage its purpose: Greater chemistry – between people and planet.
