Swiss staff is expanding: Will a woman take the helm?: The successor of Swiss CEO Vranckx has already been determined

Blick understands that a generational change at parent company Lufthansa is behind the CEO’s departure. Four of Lufthansa’s six board members to date, including former Swiss CEO Harry Hohmeister (60), are leaving their positions mid-year.

Vranckx will join the Lufthansa management team, which will be reduced to five members in the future. He will become the airline group’s chief commercial officer on July 1. He meets an old Swiss acquaintance in Frankfurt. Tamur Goudarzi Pour (50), who moved to Frankfurt at the end of 2023 and was replaced by Heike Birlenbach (57) in Switzerland in January 2024, then reports to Vranckx.

Setup game?

Castling comes as a surprise to foreigners. But the mega restructuring at the top of Europe’s largest aviation company was not decided quickly. Doing something like this without a plan would be unprofessional and out of character for Lufthansa.

The “waterfall of knowledge” is remarkable: Binkert applied for the CEO position three years ago, following the departure of then-Swiss boss Thomas Klühr (62), and lost to Vranckx. He would now have the chance to take over as CEO again, but he is moving towards the top of the SV Group.

Apparently he suspected others had better luck. Binkert knows Lufthansa’s “plan” in such situations: CEO Carsten Spohr (57) needs “compatible” people from his inner circle – which, unlike Binkert, includes Vranckx. In addition, the lucrative CEO position in Switzerland is a “staffing” at the parent company headquartered in Frankfurt, or a noble training camp for higher posts. This was also the case with Hohmeister and Vranckx. Therefore, those with whom Blick was able to speak suspect that it has already been decided who will replace Vranckx. Or at least who belongs to the narrower circle of candidates.

The first woman to become a CEO?

It is likely that there are currently two women in the CEO position in the Lufthansa Group. Annette Mann (46) has served as CEO of Austrian Airlines since March 2022. The former Lufthansa executive worked as Vice President of Product Management in Switzerland from 2016 to 2020. Dorothea von Boxberg (50) moved to the top position at Brussels Airlines from Lufthansa in April 2023.

For both, the CEO position in Switzerland would mean a promotion within the company. However, like Birlenbach, you have been in the boss position for a relatively short time.

Bernd Bauer, 57, CEO of Edelweiss and Eurowings Discover, is less likely to run. The second involves difficult negotiations with pilots.

No Switzerland in sight

What about the Swiss airline’s top executives? They almost don’t exist anymore. Peter Baumgartner, 53, is a member of the Swissair management team with Vranckx and spent several years as CEO of Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi. Since returning to Switzerland in 2020, Meilen has been running a family office in ZH. In 2020, several Swiss politicians tried to bring him into play as Klühr’s successor, but without success.

When asked by Blick, he said: “Lufthansa generally relies on internal solutions; as a pro forma Swiss citizen, I would not hesitate to take part in the evaluation.” If he had been openly asked to take over the position, he would have considered it.

Swiss board members from outside the board are not much of an option. And since Lufthansa always assigns the best jobs internally, the chances of outsiders and former employees are almost zero. This also applies to Tobias Pogorevc (52), CEO of the small Helvetic Airways, and André Dosé (66) and Björn Näf (58), who both failed to manage the Swiss before it was taken over by Lufthansa.