Carsten Knobel is to become the new CEO of the Henkel consumer goods group. He will succeed the Belgian Hans Van Bylen, who has run the German company since 2016, on New Year’s Day.
Personal reasons
Van Bylen will step down for personal reasons, after 35 years of service with the German group. On 1 January 2020, he will hand over power to the current CFO, Carsten Knobel. The latter was born in 1969 in Marburg, and after studying business administration and technical chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin, he began his career with Henkel in 1995. He was appointed to his current role in 2012.
Van Bylen is the first Belgian ever to lead a large listed German company, Belgian newspaper De Standaard found out. His company employs 53,000 people worldwide and is active in more than 120 countries. In August, the Belgian top executive had to lower group’s turnover and profit expectations again.
