Manfred Grundke leaving Bosch to take up post as managing director of a privately owned German company

V K Viswanathan to be new managing director of the Bosch Indian subsidiary Motor Industries Company Limited (Mico)

Stuttgart/Lohr. Effective February 1, 2008, Dr. Albert Hieronimus (60) is to be the new chairman of the Bosch Rexroth AG board of management. Hieronimus is currently managing director of Motor Industries Company Limited (Mico), the Bosch Indian subsidiary headquartered in Bangalore. At the same time, Dr. Karl Tragl (45), who is responsible for Bosch Rexroth’s Electric Drives and Controls division, will be appointed to the company’s board of management. In his new role, he will be responsible for sales, a task currently carried out by Bosch Rexroth AG board of management chairman Manfred Grundke (52) in addition to his other duties. Manfred Grundke is leaving Bosch on February 29, 2008, to take up a post as managing director of a privately owned German company “We would like to thank Manfred Grundke for his successful work of the past years, and are glad to welcome Dr. Albert Hieronimus as his successor, since he knows Bosch Rexroth very well,” said Dr. Siegfried Dais, deputy chairman of the Bosch board of management and chairman of the Bosch Rexroth AG supervisory council.

Following his mathematics degree, and while studying for his doctorate, Dr. Albert Hieronimus first worked as a research assistant at the University of Cologne before joining what was then Mannesmann AG in 1979. He held various posts there, with increasing levels of responsibility. In 1993, he was appointed to the board of management of Mannesmann Rexroth AG. Following the merger of Mannesmann Rexroth AG with the Bosch Automation technology division in 2001, he initially served on the executive management of Bosch Rexroth, where he was responsible for human resources, IT, and coordinating post-merger integration. In 2003, he left Bosch Rexroth to become managing director of Mico, Bosch’s Indian subsidiary. Effective February 1, 2008, this post will pass to V K Viswanathan, currently a member of the Mico management team with responsibility for several Bosch divisions. Hieronimus will retain his links with India, becoming chairman of the Indian company’s board of directors effective February 1, 2008. Hieronimus is married and has two grown-up children.

A physics graduate, Dr. Karl Tragl joined Mannesmann Rexroth in 2000, following jobs at the German Aerospace Research Center and Siemens with assignments in Munich and the UK. He is currently president of the division Electric Drives and Controls of Bosch Rexroth, with responsibility for technology. Tragl is married and has four children.

Bosch Rexroth AG is one of the world’s leading specialists in the field of drive and control technologies. Under the brand name of Rexroth the company supplies more than 500,000 customers with tailored solutions for driving, controlling and moving machinery used in industrial and factory automation as well as in mobile applications. As The Drive & Control Company, Bosch Rexroth develops, produces and sells components and systems in more than 80 countries. In 2006 Bosch Rexroth AG, part of the Bosch Group, achieved sales of approximately 4.9 billion Euro with more than 29,800 employees.

Courtesy of Bosch Rexroth