Sulzer Appoints Fabrice Billard as Chief Strategy Officer and Member of the Executive Committee
The Sulzer Board of Directors has appointed Fabrice Billard as Chief Strategy Officer and member of the Sulzer Executive Committee. Billard, who is currently Head of the Mass Transfer Technology business unit of Chemtech, will assume his role as of March 1, 2015. He will be responsible for the implementation of the Sulzer Full Potential program.
Fabrice Billard (Image: Sulzer)
The company has established this corporate program to frame and accelerate the change journey toward becoming one focused, market-oriented, globally operating company. With this top-priority program, Sulzer aims to strengthen its core business—organically and by acquisitions—reduce the complexity of operations, and maximize synergies and overall efficiency.
Fabrice Billard (44, French citizen), has broad experience and a successful track record occupying various management and business development positions at Sulzer, both in Switzerland and Singapore. After having worked ten years for consultancies in Paris, Zurich, and London, in strategy, operational improvement, and human resources, he began his career at Sulzer in 2004 as Corporate Strategic Planning and Acquisition Manager. Soon after, he assumed responsibility for global customer service at Sulzer Pumps. From 2008 onwards, he was in charge of business development for the Chemtech division. After that, he led the Europe, Middle East, India, Russia, and Africa region within the Mass Transfer Technology (MTT) business unit. Since 2012, Fabrice Billard has been Head of the MTT global business unit. He holds a Master of Science from the Ecole Centrale Paris. His achievements include the establishment of a strong global market position for the MTT business in the oil and gas market and the significant increase of profitability margins within this business unit.
Klaus Stahlmann, CEO of Sulzer, underscores, “With his extensive professional expertise, his experience within two Sulzer divisions as well as on group level, and his strong personal commitment, Fabrice Billard will play a key role in the successful development and implementation of our strategy. By lifting the leadership of the Sulzer Full Potential program to the level of the Executive Committee, we are emphasizing the importance of this program, which was designed to substantially increase the company’s profitability.” On February 12, 2015, Sulzer announced that from 2017 onwards, the company aims to improve profitability (measured on operational ROSA) by four to six percentage points.
Fabrice Billard will assume his new role as of March 1, 2015. The Chemtech Division President Oliver Bailer will take over the responsibilities as Head of the Mass Transfer Technology business unit on an ad interim basis.
