For the first time, Adidas Ag’s supervisory board has nominated two women to stand for election at the company’s annual meeting on May 8, 2014.


 

The nominees are: Katja Kraus, former Executive Board member of Bundesliga club Hamburger SV, and Kathrin Menges, Executive Vice President of Human Resources and Infrastructure Services at Henkel AG & Co. KGaA. The supervisory board has thus exceeded its set target of nominating at least one female candidate as a shareholder representative at this year’s election.

 

Kraus, 43, a former national football player and Executive Board member of Bundesliga club Hamburger SV (HSV) from 2003 to 2011, has been running the sports marketing agency Jung von Matt/sports since 2013 and is also a successful book author. Menges, 49, joined Henkel AG & Co. KGaA in 1999 and has been responsible for Human Resources and Infrastructure Services as a member of the Management Board since October 2011.



“With Katja Kraus and Kathrin Menges, we are delighted to welcome two highly expert female candidates for election to the Supervisory Board,” said Igor Landau, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of adidas AG. “Adidas AG stands for performance, passion, integrity and diversity. The nomination of Katja Kraus and Kathrin Menges will help ensure that the supervisory board of Adidas AG continues to reflect these values in the future. We are confident that Katja Kraus and Kathrin Menges are ideally qualified for this challenging task, and that they will contribute to the safeguarding of the sustainable success of the Adidas Group throughout the next five years.”

 

Christian Tourres, a member of the supervisory board of Adidas AG since 2001 and Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Adidas AG from 1993 to 2001, will not be standing for re-election this year on the grounds of age. Fellow member of the supervisory board Alexander Popov, who became a supervisory board member in 2009, is also not standing for re-election, for professional reasons. The other current shareholder representatives – Igor Landau, Dr Stefan Jentzsch, Herbert Kauffmann and Willi Schwerdtle – will be up for re-election at the May 8 annual meeting. The Adidas AG employees will elect their representatives for the supervisory board at the end of March.


 

“On behalf of the supervisory board of adidas AG, I would like to sincerely thank Alexander Popov and Christian Tourres, two members who have helped advance the work of our Board in a number of different ways through the contributions they have made over recent years,” said Landau. “In his role as a member of the Executive Board and, more recently, as a member of the Supervisory Board, Christian Tourres has played a major part over the past two decades in making the adidas Group a leader in today’s sporting goods industry, as well as in ensuring that the company is ideally positioned for a successful future.”