Generational Transition of Shareholder Leadership in the Family Owned Merz Group

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Generational Transition of Shareholder Leadership in the Family Owned Merz Group

2025-01-06 23:00 Last Updated At：23:10

FRANKFURT AM MAIN, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 6, 2025--

Merz has been under the ownership of its founding family since its establishment in 1908. Merz Holding GmbH & Co. KG serves as the parent company for all operational units of Merz Group. The leadership team of the Family Holding is composed of three representatives from the Merz founding family. As of January 1st, 2025, the baton is passed on to the younger shareholder generation.

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The previous management of Merz Holding GmbH & Co. KG consisted of the three shareholders Christian Baatz, Andreas Meyer and Michael Nick. After more than 12 years in their roles as managing directors, Andreas Meyer and Michael Nick hand over their responsibilities to shareholders Dr. Dania Hückmann and Dr. Sebastian Schellhaas. Christian Baatz will remain a managing director.

Alongside Christian Baatz, Dr. Dania Hückmann and Dr. Sebastian Schellhaas will also become members of the Merz Holding Board, which is responsible for all strategic decisions across the Merz Group. In addition to the three family representatives, the Merz Holding Board includes the two managing directors of the operational Merz Holding – Philip Burchard and Hans-Jörg Bergler – as well as Dr. Christian Holzherr. Philip Burchard will continue as chairman of the Merz Holding Board, while Christian Baatz will take over the role of vice chairman from Andreas Meyer.

The generational transition has been in the works for an extended period and is the result of an intensive, structured program designed to optimally prepare the new managing directors for their responsibilities. This transition ensures both continuity in the ownership strategy and renewal through the handover to a younger generation.

Andreas Meyer and Michael Nick look back on their time at Merz with joy and pride: “Over the past 12 years, Merz has undergone significant transformation and developed into a diversified corporate group with multiple successful business ventures.” They expressed their heartfelt gratitude to the family, management, and all employees for their dedication and support, which were critical to the company’s success.

Christian Baatz, Dr. Dania Hückmann, and Dr. Sebastian Schellhaas are grateful for the trust placed in them by the owner family and look forward to collaborating with all employees to ensure the continued success of the entire Merz Group in the future.

About Merz Group

Merz Group is a global, diversified company in the healthcare sector based in Frankfurt, Germany. Family-owned for over 116 years, the company is distinguished by its commitment to innovation, long-term perspective, and focus on profitable and sustainable growth. Merz Group includes the businesses Merz Aesthetics, Merz Therapeutics, Merz Consumer Care, Merz Real Estate, Merz Financial Investments and Merz Private Markets. The company employs 4,727 people (as of the 23/24 financial year) in 30 countries worldwide. To learn more, please visit https://www.merz.com/.

Many structures already destroyed in Pacific Palisades wildfire, California governor says

2025-01-08 08:24 Last Updated At：08:30

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Firefighters scrambled to corral a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hillsides dotted with celebrity homes as a fierce windstorm hit Southern California on Tuesday, fanning the blaze seen for miles as scores of residents abandoned their cars and fled on foot to safety with roads blocked.

About 30,000 residents are under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures are under threat, said Kristin Crowley, fire chief of the LA Fire Department.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he saw “many structures already destroyed." Officials did not give an exact number of structures damaged or destroyed in the blaze.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known, and no injuries had been reported, officials said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Newsom warned residents across Southern California not to assume they are out of danger, saying the worst of the winds are expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Forecasters predicted the windstorm would last for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven't seen substantial rain in months. The National Weather service said it could be the strongest Santa Anawindstorm in more than a decade across Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Roughly half a million utility customers were at risk of having their power shut off to reduce the risk of equipment sparking blazes.

In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in western Los Angeles, a fire swiftly consumed nearly 2 square miles (just over 5 square kilometers) of land, sending up a dramatic plume of smoke visible across the city. Residents in Venice Beach, some 6 miles (10 kilometers) away, reported seeing the flames. It was one of several blazes across the area.

Sections of Interstate 10 and the scenic Pacific Coast Highway were closed to all non-essential traffic to aid in evacuation efforts. But other roads were blocked. Some residents jumped out of their vehicles to get out of danger and waited to be picked up.

Resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighborhood was completely blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.

“We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming. The road was just blocked, like full-on blocked for an hour.”

An Associated Press journalist saw a roof and chimney of one home in flames and another residence where the walls were burning. The neighborhood that borders Malibu about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of downtown LA includes hillside streets of tightly packed homes along winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretches down to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.

Long-time Palisades resident Will Adams said he was down in town when the fires started and immediately went to pick his two kids up from St. Matthews Parish’s school, which is now in the line of the fire.

His wife, who was at home, was driving down the main evacuation road for residents in the upper part of the neighborhood when embers flew into her car.

“She vacated her car and left it running,” Adams said. She and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe.

Adams said he had never seen a fire this low into the neighborhood in the 56 years he’s lived there.

“It is crazy, it’s everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One home’s safe, the other one’s up in flames,” Adams said.

He watched as the sky turned brown and then black as homes started burning. He could hear loud popping and bangs “like small explosions,” which he said he believes were the transformers exploding on the electric poles.

Actor James Woods posted footage of flames burning through bushes and past palm trees on a hill near his home. The towering orange flames billowed among the landscaped yards between the homes.

“Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,” Woods said in the short video on X.

Actor Steve Guttenberg, who lives in the Pacific Palisades, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could be moved to make way for fire trucks.

“This is not a parking lot,” Guttenberg told KTLA. “I have friends up there and they can’t evacuate … I’m walking up there as far as I can moving cars.”

The erratic weather caused President Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland Riverside County, California, where he was to announce the establishment of two new national monuments in the state. Biden will deliver his remarks in Los Angeles instead.

The Los Angeles Unified School District said it was temporarily relocating students from three campuses in the Pacific Palisades area due to the fire.

Amazon and MGM Studios canceled a premiere of Jennifer Lopez’s new film “Unstoppable” due to the fires and high winds.

The winds will act as an “atmospheric blow-dryer” for vegetation, bringing a long period of fire risk, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“We really haven't seen a season as dry as this one follow a season as wet as the previous one,” Swain said Monday.

Recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there’s been very little rain so far this season.

Southern California hasn’t seen more than 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) of rain since early May. Much of the region has fallen into moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, up north, there have been multiple drenching storms.

Areas where gusts could create extreme fire conditions include the charred footprint of last month’s wind-driven Franklin Fire, which damaged or destroyed 48 structures, mostly homes, in and around Malibu.

Associated Press writers Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles contributed to this report, Julie Watson in San Diego, and videojournalist Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles contributed.