Dagmar Steinert, 57, has been appointed to the Executive Board of Rheinmetall, effective 1 January 2023. Steinert, currently a member of the board of management of Fuchs Petrolub SE responsible for commercial operations as well as legal affairs, compliance, and digitization, is due to succeed Helmut P. Merch, 66, as Chief Financial Officer of Rheinmetall, who retires at the end of 2022.
Ulrich Grillo, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Rheinmetall AG, and Armin Papperger, Chairman of the Group’s Executive Board, issued the following joint statement: “In Dagmar Steinert we are gaining an outstanding expert in all areas of corporate finance, who moreover has a great deal of experience in communicating with the capital markets. She will continue Helmut Merch’s longstanding successful work on the Executive Board, thanks not least to her excellent knowledge of Rheinmetall’s business, processes, and corporate culture, gained when she was a Group executive.”
From 2003 to 2013, Dagmar Steinert headed the Accounting Department of Rheinmetall AG. As well as holding a degree in Business Administration from the University of Cologne, she is a certified auditor and tax advisor. Steinert began her career at various auditing and tax consultancy firms, lastly spending five years at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Following her time at Rheinmetall, she joined the MDax-listed company Fuchs Petrolub in Mannheim, initially serving as Head of Investor Relations. In 2016 she joined the company’s board of management as CFO.
CFO of Rheinmetall since January 2013, Helmut P. Merch first joined the company in 1982, where he has held a wide variety of leadership posts. Among other things, during his forty years with the Group he has headed former Rheinmetall subsidiaries, serving as division head and board member of the former mechanical engineering subsidiary Jagenberg AG and as deputy chairman of Aditron AG, an electronics company previously owned by the Group. Since 2001, he has been CFO of Rheinmetall’s Defence arm, a role he continued to play following his accession to the Executive Board of Rheinmetall AG. The Supervisory Board and Executive Board will honour Helmut P. Merch’s achievements on behalf of the company at an official ceremony at the end of 2022.