Professor Karl-Ludwig Kley

Karl-Ludwig Kley was born on June 11, 1951 in Munich (Germany). He is Chairman of the Supervisory Boards of E.ON SE (Essen, Germany) and Deutsche Lufthansa AG (Cologne/Frankfurt, Germany). From 2006 he was member and from 2007 through 2016 he was Chairman of the Board and CEO of Darmstadt-based Merck KGaA. Prior to that, Karl-Ludwig Kley served as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Deutsche Lufthansa AG from 1997 to 2006.

In addition to his Supervisory Board positions, Karl-Ludwig Kley serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Fritz Thyssen Foundation in Cologne and member of the Board of Trustees of acatech Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften (National Academy of Science and Engineering) in Munich.

Over the course of the last 20 years, he has been a non-executive director of numerous boards, including Amadeus IT Group SA (Madrid, Spain), Bertelsmann AG (Gütersloh, Germany), MAN AG (Munich) and Verizon Communications, Inc. (New York, USA). Additionally, he served as Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Munich-based BMW AG until May 2021.

Karl-Ludwig Kley holds a Ph.D. in Law from Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. He is an honorary professor of the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, Honorary Senator of the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg and a member of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel).

In recognition of his outstanding services, he received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy (Commendatore), the Order of Merit of Hessia (Germany) and the Weizmann Award in the Sciences and Humanities.