Emmanuel Dejonckheere is heading the CFO office at BNP Paribas-Fortis, steering in this function the Plan 2020 of the finance function and the order-to-pay department. Before joining BNPP-Fortis in 2003, he worked for approximately 8 years in the audit and the management consulting departments at PwC. At BNPP-Fortis, he has been leading both key trans­formation programs as well as production departments, mainly in the enterprise performance management environment. He graduated from the University of Leuven (BE) and holds an MBA in banking. He currently resides in Belgium, close to Antwerp and Ghent, and is a regular guest speaker at CFO conferences.

In his nearly 19-year career with CSL Behring, Dr. Sanat Jeetun has held positions as the director of finance and the risk coordinator at CSL Beh­ring. In January 2004, Dr. Jeetun was appointed as the managing director at Seqirus GmbH. Other companies he has worked for include BMW Rolls- Royce GmbH, Pepsi-Cola GmbH, and KPMG. Dr.Jeetun holds a master’s degree in economics and a doctoral degree in finance/accountancy from Philipps-University Marburg, Germany.

Dr. Mike Schwarz received a Dipl. degree from the University of Applied Sciences Giessen-Friedberg (Giessen, Germany), in 2008, and a master’s of science in electrical engineering from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain) in 2009. From 2008-13, he was a research assistant and PhD student in the device modelling research group and the Competence Center for Nanotechnology and Photonics at the Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen in Giessen, Germany. He received his PhD with honours from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in October 2012 on the subject of compact modeling of Schottky barrier multiple-gate FETs. Mike was the recipient of the Friedrich Dessauer Prize for the best diploma thesis about multiclass support vector machines in 2008 and the URV Graduated Student Meeting on Electronic Engineering Award for the best oral presentation for a paper about an analytical model for the electric field in Schottky barrier double-gate MOSFETs in 2010. Since 2013, Mike has been with Robert Bosch GmbH, working in the research and development department on design, modelling and simulation of MEMS sensors and systems. Mike has, at present, 112 publications, 59 conference papers, 18 journal articles and 35 patents. His h-index is 10. Mike is committed to volunteering work within IEEE, as he is a member of the IEEE Young Professionals, vice-chair of the IEEE Young Professionals Germany Section, editor of Western Europe EDS newsletter, IEEE Compact Modeling Committee, TPC MIXDES and TPC QCIT. 

Robin started coding at primary school, creating a life-long fascination with technology. Through the late 90’s dot-com boom, he had ring-side seating working directly within the telecom and internet industry, ex­periencing first-hand the growth, expansion, and then disruption that followed. Robin has direct technical experience in the developments that the 21st century has brought us; working within the tech sector as most of the tech services we now take for granted were brought to market. Robin has undertaken senior executive roles with international responsi­bility for European, South East Asian, and US technology businesses. He has managed strategic change processes, led corporate strategy, execu­tion of commercial plans, M&A, product, sales, and marketing teams. He has served on boards and senior leadership teams for public and private companies and has extensive experience in fixed communica­tions, wireless, data centre, and cloud services. He is currently the head of technology and media M&A at BDO Corporate Finance; advising busi­ness owners and private equity on corporate strategy, value creation, M&A, and financing. He is also an advisory committee member at TechUK representing the interests of the UK technology sector and advising on issues affecting the sector. Prior to BDO, Robin was the vice president of portfolio strategy for Colt Technology Services responsible for the data centre and cloud IT service divisions; sitting on executive committees for corporate restructuring and digital transformation. Whilst at Colt Robin, advised on the successful sale of their cloud services division to Getronics backed by Aurelius capital. Robin has held a number of board positions with executive responsibility for corporate strategy and has successfully prepared technology businesses for growth, corporate restructuring, financing, and sale as well as managing operational roles in product, technical operations, sales, and marketing. He spent the early part of his career at Cable & Wireless (acquired by Vodafone), Verizon, and Global Crossing in consulting and sales roles, following junior positions at Price­WaterhouseCoopers and Deutsche Bank.

Dr. Martin Fritsch is currently the CFO of DHL CSI, DHL’s cross-divisional and innovation unit, active in 220 countries worldwide. Prior to this as­signment, he was Senior Vice President of global business finance for DHL Express, in which he was responsible for investments, M&A, cash flow, and balance sheets. In prior roles, he founded and headed the venture capital arm of DPDHL, co-founded a venture capital fund at GE Capital, and was deputy head M&A for an Austrian investment bank. Dr. Martin Fritsch holds a Ph.D. in business administration.

Michael Pleines joined Ferrero 14 years ago. In his role as vice direc­tor, he is in charge of accounting, consolidation, reporting, taxes, insur­ance, intercompany contracts, and financing structures within the Ferrero Group. He started his career within an audit company and after 5 years of experience within that same audit company, he continued his profes­sional career by working in financial departments of industrial companies. Today, he has more than 20 years of experience in finance and in special projects like: M&A, restructurings, and other finance related topics.

Sophie Reinius works as a FP&A Lead for Microsoft in Sweden. Prior to Microsoft, she worked as a financial controller for the Nordics and op­erations manager for Sweden within Philips Home Healthcare. Prior to working at Philips, she worked at Schneider Electric as a group controller for the Nordics and Baltics. She also has a background within the tele­com industry as well as having experience in law. Sophie Reinius holds a Bachelor’s degree in finance and a Master’s in law. Working at Microsoft provides a great opportunity to learn about and use new tools and pro­cesses, of which Power BI is a key interest.

Pierre Le Meur is the global supply chain finance director at Sanofi, sit­ting in Paris. With more than 25 years’ experience in Financial Planning and Analysis, he has been active in the chemical and health sectors as well as in the areas of manufacturing and commercial operations. His in­ternational experience includes chief finance officer positions in Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt, and Central & Eastern Europe. An early champion of business intelligence systems, he has implemented continuous planning processes and tools all around the world.

Rob is a senior finance executive working within IBM for the past 20 years. During that time, he has been at the forefront of financial develop­ments from outsourcing and the use of cognitive analytics in creating risk responses to the changing business environment. He is currently the CFO of Central and Eastern Europe, and manages the financial strategy and operations in a region well known for its business and economic diversity. This requires an agile touch and a focus on risk management. This region includes 28 countries and several of IBM’s global service centres. Rob has lived and worked in numerous countries around the world as he took on a range of roles from European controller and commercial director to CFO of a range of business units. Prior to joining IBM, Rob worked for Walt Disney and Deloitte. Rob is also a non-executive director for a char­ity that maintains the British Royal Navy’s 18th century flag ship, HMS Victory; and was previously the non-executive director of the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

Daryusch’s controller career began in 1999 when he joined the Volvo Group, running an invoice verification project at more than 30 entities of Volvo Construction Equipment. During the past 18 years, he held posi­tions and led controller teams within the areas of sales controlling, R&D controlling, project controlling, and risk management before joining the FP&A team at Volvo CE headquarters in 2014, where he was responsible for global profitability controlling. Believing that financial data is a mural that shows a company’s business story, Daryusch is actively sharing this idea of financial murals and arranges courses to sharpen the ability to interpret financials and therefore be able to share the business story that caused the financial impact. Prior to joining Volvo, Daryusch has worked for Deutsche Postbank Int. S.A and as an executive partner for All-Frost, a start-up in convenience products and services.

For over 3 years, Christian Poehlking is the finance & administration di­rector for Boehringer Ingelheim Italy where he is responsible for finance, controlling, taxes, purchasing, IT, SCM, and general administration for all sites and entities of BI in Italy. He is also a member of the board for BI Italy and Merial Italy. He holds a master’s degree in business administra­tion. Christian has been in the pharmaceutical industry for approximately 20 years, working within controlling, finance, global purchasing and as a PMO, both in operative units and at the headquarter level.

Mr. Jager is a proactive, no-nonsense, hands-on, team-oriented, well ex­perienced, motivated, enthusiastic, responsible, and independent FP&A professional. He is results-oriented with a ‘get the job done’ attitude and has a keen eye for details. He has worked in many multicultural compa­nies and environments and has built many bridges between colleagues and departments (i.e. finance versus all other non-finance). Mr. Jager is currently the FP&A and controller at Marktplaats BV/eBay Classifieds. He has performed activities, responsibilities, and tasks for all contracts for temporary and permanent employment relationships for over 20 years.

Thilo Sekol, born in 1966, studied business administration at the Univer­sity of Mannheim in Germany and did a parallel MBA degree in Michigan, USA. After finalising his studies, Mr. Sekol started his career at trans-o-flex AG and became primarily responsible for the subsidiary controlling and for the consolidated statement of the company which belonged to Haniel group at the time. In 1998, Mr. Sekol started working at Heidel­berger Druckmaschinen AG and was at first responsible for the control­ling of the sales & service within Central Europe. Simultaneously, he was a member of the supervisory board of 5 Scandinavian subsidiaries of the Heidelberg group. In 2001, Mr. Sekol became head of controlling of Ger­man sales & service unit inside the Heidelberg group. He implemented a best practice solution for the forecast and shared service controlling for branch offices in a very successful way. From 2006 onwards, he has held various coordinative positions in global controlling within SAP SE. Since 2009, he has been working as a business consultant specialising in controlling and finance topics at SAP CFO Advisory of SAP Deutschland SE & Co KG and managing several internal and external projects. He is an author of several articles about controlling topics, a former guest lecturer at the German European School of Business (esb, Reutlingen) and Pforzheim University, and the founder of the ‘Rhein Neckar Control­ling Days’ – a regular controller meeting in the Rhein-Neckar Region, Germany. In his spare time, he manages the ‘Wissenstransfertag’ in the Metropolitan area ‘Rhein-Neckar’ in Germany, a very successful yearly event for networking and education in the Rhein-Neckar Region which has long been established and was honoured in 2009 by the president of Germany as a ‘selected location’ at the initiative ‘365 landmarks in the land of ideas’.