DECEMBER 11-- Gerd Litfin, founder and for many years chief executive officer of the LINOS Group (Göttingen, Germany; www.linos.de), is resigning from his current management position at the end of the year to join the supervisory board at the beginning of January 2007. Volker Brockmeyer, who has been chief financial officer up to now, will be his successor as chief executive officer. Beginning in January 2007, he will be the sole director of LINOS AG.
Litfin will be taking over the position of chairman of the supervisory board from Gerd Kastrup, who will be remaining a member of the board. Reinhold Barlian and Gottfried Neuhaus will be resigning from the supervisory board at the end of the year. Nils Stoesser is to be appointed the third member of the supervisory board. He is director of the private equity company Candover Partners, the main Qioptiq shareholder.
The changes in the corporate management are connected with the takeover of LINOS by the Qioptiq Group, which was completed on October 11, 2006. Litfin and his family, the main shareholders in the past, sold their shares within the framework of the takeover.
Benoit Bazire, CEO of the Qioptiq Group, said: "With LINOS, we have acquired a highly complementary business whose strengths we are keen to protect, utilize, and build on. LINOS will benefit from our global footprint, particularly from our strong sales presence in the USA, and from our technical excellence in a number of complementary areas."
