DÜSSELDORF, Germany — The Shareholders’ Committee of Henke
l AG & Co. KGaA elected Simone Bagel-Trah as its new chairwoman. Bagel-Trah takes over this office from Albrecht Woeste, who has been a member of the committee since 1976 and became its chairman in 1990. Bagel-Trah is also due to be elected chair of Henkel’s Supervisory Board. This completes the transition from the fourth generation of the Henkel family to the fifth. The change at the top of these two supervisory bodies was announced at the Henkel Annual General Meeting of Spring 2008.
In April 2008, Woeste made it known that he would like to see the 40-year-old doctor of microbiology Bagel-Trah named as his successor. As a member of Henkel’s corporate bodies, Woeste has been closely involved in the Henkel history for a number of decades. The 73-year-old has been chairman of the Supervisory Board and of the Shareholders’ Committee since 1990. As the great-grandson of company founder Fritz Henkel, he represents the fourth generation of the Henkel family.
As a great-great-granddaughter of the company founder, Simone Bagel-Trah is part of the fifth generation of the Henkel family. Bagel-Trah was a member of the Supervisory Board of Henkel KGaA from 2001 to 2005, and she has been on the Shareholders’ Committee since 2005. She was elected to the Supervisory Board of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA in April 2008 and, at the same time, appointed vice-chair of both the Shareholders’ Committee of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA and of the Supervisory Board of Henkel Management AG. Bagel-Trah is partner and director of the clinical microbiological research company "Antiinfectives Intelligence" (Rheinbach, Germany).