A top ams Osram executive who is the highest ranking of all the former Osram brass remaining at the now combined entity will be leaving the company at the end of April.
Ingo Bank will step aside as chief financial officer (CFO) of the Premstaetten, Austria sensor and LED maker for personal reasons, ams Osram said in a press release.
Bank was also CEO of the company’s Munich-based Osram Licht, a position he took over from former Osram boss Olaf Berlien on March 1, 2021, during ams’ early days as Osram’s new owner but before ams had gained a stronger “domination” control of Osram.
“Ingo Bank, chief financial officer of ams Osram, has informed the Supervisory Board that for personal reasons he does not plan to extend his contract as member of the Management Board beyond April 2023,” the company announced.
Bank is closely associated with Osram’s pre-ams days, having served as Osram’s CFO from September 2016 through May 2020, when he became CFO of ams.
Ams completed a long and winding acquisition of Osram in July 2020 when European regulators approved the deal. It gained domination status about two weeks after Bank became Osram CEO.
Bank has been instrumental in integrating the two companies. That process has included the sale of many Osram operations that did not fit the mission of ams Osram CEO Alexander Everke to focus on chip-level activities in sensors, LEDs, lasers, and optics.
To some extent, the sales of former Osram groups such as Fluence, Traxon Technologies, Digital Lumens, the North American driver group, the Eurasian driver group, a Bulgarian components factory, and an automotive headlamp operation have helped pay for the acquisition, in which ams borrowed to buy the company roughly four times its size.
“As CFO, Ingo Bank navigated our company through a demanding environment in the last years,” said ams Osram’s Margarete Haase, chairwoman of the supervisory board. “His contribution to bringing the cultures of ams and OSRAM together will remain a lasting value.”
The company has not announced a replacement.
“The Supervisory Board will swiftly commence the necessary steps to prepare a succession for the position in the management board as of May 2023,” an ams Osram spokesperson said.
Bank’s departure will mark yet another parting with the old Osram guard for ams Osram (although Bank had left Osram to work for ams, he still represented a certain continuity with the previous regime).
Since ams won regulatory approval for the acquisition in July 2020, former CEO Berlien, former chief technology officer Stefan Kampmann, and the former CEO of Osram Optical Semiconductors (Opto OS) have all left.
One former Osram boss who is still with ams Osram is Wilhelm Nehring, who runs a division called Osram Digital Systems.
MARK HALPER is a contributing editor for LEDs Magazine, and an energy, technology, and business journalist ([email protected]).
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