Change in the Directorship of Business and Administration at ZEW

At today's festive event, the Mannheim Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) will bid farewell to Ernst-O. Schulze, its Director of Business and Administration, who had accompanied the research institute since its founding. In this context, ZEW will also introduce his successor, Thomas Kohl, who will assume his new office on August 1, 2004. Being a long-standing attorney and Deputy Head of Business and Administration, he is very well acquainted with the given circumstances at ZEW.

The retirement of Schulze, who will turn 65 on July 23, means that ZEW loses a research manager whose competence, experience and contacts in science and research have made a valuable contribution to successfully establishing and shaping ZEW. "You've done an excellent job in your field of responsibility," acknowledges Gerhard Stratthaus MdL, Head of the ZEW Supervisory Board and Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Finance.

At the end of 1990, Schulze was appointed Director of Business and Administration to the newly founded ZEW. Since then, he has been responsible for the institute's overall management, first in conjunction with Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Heinz König, and later, starting from 1997, with König's successor Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolfgang Franz. Schulze has always been very committed to turning the young institute into one of Germany's leading economic research institutes. In doing so, one of his priorities was to introduce modern management tools and techniques that respond to the needs of scientific research, such as a flexible financial statute and IT-based planning and management instruments. He also placed great focus on applying knowledge in practice. Thanks to his efforts, ZEW became the only research institute in Germany to successfully provide ZEW-specific advanced training opportunities in the form of expert seminars and qualification programmes for domestic and foreign specialists and executive staff.

Schulze largely contributed to the expansion of ZEW to its current size, featuring 130 employees, an annual budget of about eleven million euros, and a share of equity financing of well over 40 per cent raised, in particular, by means of increased third-party funding and cost optimisation. ZEW's success story is visibly reflected, for instance, in its impending inclusion on the Blue List of research institutes jointly funded by the federal states and the German government on January 1, 2005.

Thomas Kohl, born in 1962, will take over Schulze's position as Director of Business and Administration at ZEW. In 1992, after heaving worked as head of administration for an international organisation, he joined ZEW, where he eagerly supported the Board of Directors in successfully establishing the institute. Kohl is Head of the Service Department "General Services" and responsible for various staff functions. In 1997, Thomas Kohl was granted general commercial power of attorney. Four years later, in 2001, he was appointed Deputy Director of Business and Administration.

Printable pictures of Thomas Kohl.