Joe Kaeser

Joe Kaeser
Born	Josef Käser 1957-06-2323 June 1957 (age 69) Arnbruck, Bavaria, West Germany
Nationality	German
Education	Regensburg University of Applied Sciences (business administration)
Alma mater	Regensburg University of Applied Sciences
Occupation	Business executive
Years active	1980-present
Employer	Siemens (1980-2021)
Title	President and chief executive officer
Term	2013-2021
Predecessor	Peter Löscher
Successor	Roland Busch
Known for	CEO of Siemens AG Vision 2020 restructuring Chair of Siemens Energy
Children	2

Joe Kaeser (born Josef Käser; 23 June 1957) is a German business executive who served as president and chief executive officer of Siemens AG from 2013 to 2021. He spent his entire executive career at Siemens, joining in 1980 and serving as chief financial officer from 2006 before his appointment as chief executive.

Kaeser reorganised Siemens around a smaller number of focused businesses and separated several of its largest units into independent listed companies, including Osram, Siemens Healthineers and Siemens Energy. He was also a visible figure in German public life, accompanying Chancellor Angela Merkel on numerous state visits, and attracted criticism for a 2014 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and for the company's involvement in an Australian coal project in 2020.

Early life and education

Josef Käser was born on 23 June 1957 in Arnbruck, a village in the Bavarian Forest in what was then West Germany. He grew up in a rural, modest household in one of the less prosperous regions of Bavaria.

He studied business administration at the Regensburg University of Applied Sciences, graduating in 1980. He later adopted the anglicised form "Joe Kaeser" during his years working in the United States, and retained it professionally thereafter.

Career

Early career at Siemens

Kaeser joined Siemens in 1980 and spent the whole of his career with the company, a pattern common among German industrial executives of his generation.

He held a series of business administration and finance roles, including a posting to Siemens Components Operations in Malacca, Malaysia, from 1987 to 1988. In 1990 he was appointed vice president of business administration for the Opto Semiconductors division.

In 1994 he moved to the United States as executive vice president and chief financial officer, and subsequently chief executive, of Siemens Components in Cupertino, California, and of Siemens Microelectronics in nearby San Jose. The period in Silicon Valley shaped his later views on technology and on the pace of change in electronics markets.

Corporate finance and strategy

In 1999 Kaeser joined Siemens corporate finance, where he was responsible for developing a company-wide performance controlling system. He shared oversight of two significant projects: preparing the company's listing on the New York Stock Exchange and converting its worldwide accounting to U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.

From April 2001 to September 2004 he was a member of the group executive committee of Siemens IC Mobile and its chief financial officer, where he managed the unit's exposure from vendor financing to telecommunications customers and its working capital position, a significant issue in the aftermath of the telecommunications downturn.

He then became chief strategy officer, supporting chief executive Klaus Kleinfeld in designing and executing the Fit4More transformation programme and in orienting company strategy around long-term global trends.

In 2006 Kaeser was appointed chief financial officer of Siemens AG and a member of the managing board, a position he held for seven years spanning the bribery scandal, the tenure of Peter Löscher and the financial crisis.

Chief executive of Siemens

In July 2013 Siemens announced that Kaeser would replace Peter Löscher as chief executive, following a period in which the company had repeatedly missed profit targets. He took office on 1 August 2013.

Vision 2020

Kaeser set out a strategy termed Vision 2020, which reorganised Siemens around what he described as the electrification, automation and digitalisation value chain. In practice this meant reducing the number of layers between the executive board and the operating businesses, dissolving the regional sector structure, and concentrating the portfolio on fewer areas where the company could hold leading positions.

The strategy involved a sustained programme of separations and acquisitions. Siemens spun off its lighting business as Osram in 2013. It acquired Dresser-Rand, the American oil and gas equipment maker, in 2015 for approximately $7.6 billion, and the aero-derivative gas turbine business of Rolls-Royce. In 2017 it acquired Mentor Graphics, the American electronic design automation company, for approximately $4.5 billion, strengthening its industrial software position.

In 2018 Siemens listed a minority stake in its medical technology business as Siemens Healthineers in what was then one of the largest German public offerings in years. In 2020 it separated its power generation and grid businesses as Siemens Energy, a company that took with it the majority stake in the wind turbine maker Siemens Gamesa. By the end of Kaeser's tenure the company had been reshaped from a broad conglomerate into a narrower industrial technology and software group.

A significant strategic setback came in 2019, when the European Commission blocked the proposed merger of Siemens Mobility with the rail business of the French company Alstom on competition grounds. Kaeser criticised the decision publicly, arguing that European competition policy was assessed against European rather than global markets and left European firms disadvantaged against Chinese state-backed competitors.

Public role

Kaeser was among the more publicly visible German business leaders of his period. He accompanied Chancellor Angela Merkel on nine state visits, including to China in 2014, 2016 and 2018, India in 2015, and Egypt, Tunisia, Argentina, Mexico and Saudi Arabia in 2017, and travelled with Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel to the United States and Mexico in 2017.

During the Hannover Messe in April 2016 he was one of 15 German chief executives invited to a private dinner with U.S. President Barack Obama. He was part of Merkel's delegation for her first meeting with President Donald Trump in March 2017 and attended a dinner for Trump with European chief executives at the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos.

He commented publicly on political matters more often than is typical for German chief executives, including on nationalism, populism and the responsibilities of business in a democracy.

Retirement and later roles

Kaeser stepped down as chief executive in February 2021 and was succeeded by Roland Busch.

He became chair of the supervisory board of Siemens Energy in 2020 and chair of the supervisory board of Daimler Truck in 2021. He joined the board of directors of Linde plc in 2021, and has served on the supervisory board of Allianz Deutschland and, from 2015, the international council of JPMorgan Chase. He was a member of the board of directors of NXP Semiconductors from 2010 to 2022 and of the supervisory board of Daimler AG from 2014 to 2021.

In 2023 EIG Global Energy Partners appointed him a senior adviser, and he became chair of the advisory council of the Munich Security Conference. He has chaired the Asia-Pacific Committee of German Business since 2019 and served on the presidium of the Federation of German Industries from 2017 to 2019. He is a member of the European Round Table of Industrialists and a trustee of the European School of Management and Technology.

Business philosophy and management style

Kaeser's approach was shaped by two decades in finance and strategy roles before he became chief executive. He favoured structural clarity over breadth, arguing that a conglomerate could only justify its structure if the centre added value that independent businesses could not generate alone. Where he judged that test unmet, he separated the business rather than restructuring it internally.

He described the objective as making Siemens a company of focused businesses each capable of leading its market, and accepted that this would produce a smaller company. The separations of Osram, Healthineers and Siemens Energy each followed this logic.

He was also more willing than most German industrial leaders to speak publicly on political questions, describing business as having obligations to the societies in which it operates. This produced both praise and criticism, and on at least two occasions it created difficulties for the company.

Controversies

Meeting with Vladimir Putin

In late March 2014, weeks after the Russian annexation of Crimea and amid international sanctions discussions, Kaeser travelled to Russia and met President Vladimir Putin, reaffirming Siemens' long-standing commitment to the Russian market.

The visit was widely criticised in Germany and internationally, including by Chancellor Merkel, as undercutting the European position at a sensitive moment. Kaeser argued that Siemens had operated in Russia for more than 160 years and that maintaining business relationships was distinct from endorsing government actions.

Other prominent German figures took broadly sympathetic positions toward continued engagement with Russia during the same period, including former chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schröder, and the episode formed part of a wider German debate about relations with Moscow. Later accounts indicated that Kaeser came under direct pressure over the visit from American figures, who noted the scale of Siemens' business in the United States relative to Russia.

Adani coal project

In January 2020 Siemens faced sustained protest in Germany over a contract to supply rail signalling equipment for the Carmichael coal mine operated by the Adani Group in Queensland, Australia. Climate campaigners argued that the company's stated environmental commitments were inconsistent with enabling a large new coal mine.

Kaeser met the climate activist Luisa Neubauer and subsequently offered her a supervisory board position at Siemens Energy. She declined. The company decided to honour the existing contract, which Kaeser said was legally binding and small in value, while acknowledging that the decision was contested internally. He publicly expressed regret about the handling of the matter. The episode is cited in discussions of how established industrial firms reconcile legacy contracts with climate commitments.

Alstom merger and European competition policy

Kaeser's criticism of the European Commission after the Alstom decision, in which he argued that competition rules should account for global rather than European market share, drew responses from competition authorities and became part of a continuing European policy debate about industrial champions.

Personal life

Kaeser is married and has two children. He has retained close connections to his native Bavaria and to Arnbruck, the village where he was born, and has spoken about the contrast between that upbringing and the international career that followed.

He anglicised his name to Joe Kaeser during his years in California and has used that form professionally since.

Legacy

Kaeser led one of the most extensive restructurings in Siemens' modern history. The company he handed to Roland Busch in 2021 was substantially narrower than the one he inherited, having separated its lighting, medical technology and energy businesses into independently listed entities, and having added significant industrial software capability.

Assessments of the strategy differ on whether the separations released value that a conglomerate structure had suppressed, or dismantled a portfolio whose breadth provided resilience across cycles. Siemens Energy encountered substantial difficulties after its separation, particularly in its wind business, which has featured in that debate.

His public interventions, on Russia, on European competition policy and on the responsibilities of business, made him an unusually prominent corporate figure in German political life, and both the criticism and the attention he attracted reflect that visibility.

External links

• Siemens AG official website