Uniper mourns Klaus Schäfer
- Uniper‘s founding CEO Klaus Schäfer has died of complications resulting from cancer
- Klaus Schäfer wrote the Uniper success story: he was the architect of a unique corporate culture and a role model
- Uniper Supervisory Board Chairman Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Maubach and Uniper CEO Andreas Schierenbeck pay tribute to Klaus Schäfer’s achievements
Yesterday, Wednesday, August 26, 2020, Uniper’s founding CEO Klaus Schäfer died at the age of 53 at his home near Munich from the complications of a long and difficult battle with cancer. Klaus Schäfer was Uniper CEO from the company’s founding until mid-2019. His illness forced him to suspend his duties from August 2018.
Uniper was founded on January 1, 2016, when it was operationally spun off from the E.ON Group. In September 2016 the new company went public and at the end of 2016 joined the MDAX. In the following years, Uniper’s stock price tripled under Klaus Schäfer’s leadership. Schäfer successfully established Uniper in the marketplace, set its strategic course for the future, and crafted a unique corporate culture. He was highly respected inside and outside the company for his expertise, dedication, openness, and honesty. What most set Klaus Schäfer apart in the minds of his employees, management team, enterprise partners, and customers was his humanity as well as the esteem he showed toward everyone he interacted with.
Uniper CEO Andreas Schierenbeck: “We mourn the loss of Klaus Schäfer. As Uniper’s founding CEO, he played a decisive role in shaping our company’s success and will remain a lasting role model for many colleagues and employees. Our thoughts are with the members of his family, to whom we express our deepest sympathies. Together with his Management Board colleagues, Klaus Schäfer made Uniper what it is today: a strong company with dedicated employees and a special culture—the Uniper Way. His exemplary attitude and management style had a profound influence on all of us. Klaus Schäfer has left behand a lasting legacy. I’m deeply impressed and moved by the admiration, friendship, and esteem the Uniper team has for him. Klaus Schäfer will always have a special place in Uniper’s success story.”
Chairman of the Uniper Supervisory Board, Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Maubach: “Uniper pays tribute to Klaus Schäfer—a special person, a superb business leader with strong values, and an exemplary colleague. Klaus Schäfer profoundly shaped and exemplified Uniper’s corporate culture, which sets it apart from other companies. As Uniper CEO, Klaus Schäfer inspired the management team as well as employees through empathy and exactly the right mix of encouragement and high expectations. Together with his Management Board colleagues and the entire Uniper team, he did an outstanding job in transforming a company that was initially met with skepticism into one of the most successful companies in the MDAX. Since then, Uniper's business performance has been unparalleled. Klaus Schäfer also took decisive steps to lead Uniper into a decarbonized energy future. He established an excellent foundation that his successors can continue to build on. Today is a very sad day. But Klaus Schäfer’s achievements as a business leader and a role model live on. Klaus Schäfer was always deeply passionate about Uniper, something for which we will always be grateful to him. On behalf of the entire Supervisory Board, I would like to express my sincerest condolences to his family.”
After studying economics and business administration in Passau, Paris, Oxford, und Berlin, Klaus Schäfer began his career as an M&A analyst at Morgan Stanley in London. He joined the Controlling department at the former VIAG in 1996. He subsequently held a variety of management roles at VIAG AG and later at the E.ON Group. Schäfer was CFO of Thüga from 2003 to 2006 before returning to E.ON to fulfill senior management roles in Munich and Milan. He was CEO of Essen-based E.ON Ruhrgas AG (2010–2013) and then CFO of E.ON SE in Düsseldorf. In 2016 he became CEO of newly founded Uniper.
About Uniper
Uniper is a leading international energy company with around 11,500 employees and activities in more than 40 countries. With about 34 GW of installed generation capacity, Uniper is among the largest global power generators. Its main activities include power generation in Europe and Russia as well as global energy trading, including a diversified gas portfolio that makes Uniper one of Europe’s leading gas companies. Uniper sold 220 billion cubic meters of gas in 2019. The company is headquartered in Düsseldorf and is currently Germany’s third-largest publicly listed utility. Under its new strategy, Uniper aims to become carbon neutral in Europe by 2035.
This press release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Uniper SE Management and other information currently available to Uniper. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. Uniper SE does not intend, and does not assume any liability whatsoever, to update these forward-looking statements or to modify them to conform with future events or developments.
