Bertelsmann AG Chairman & CEO Gunter Thielen has been honored with the AICGS Global Leadership Award. The award was presented to Thielen by Richard D. Parsons, Chairman and CEO of the US media company Time Warner Inc., yesterday in New York. Some 450 VIPs from business, politics and academe on both sides of the Atlantic attended the event, including Wolfgang Ischinger, the German Ambassador to the U.S, Israel Singer, Chairman of the World Jewish Congress, State Finance Secretary Caio Koch-Weser and corporate consultant Roland Berger.
In its announcement, the AICGS writes that Thielen’s accomplishments and outstanding leadership at the helm of Bertelsmann are widely recognized and have earned him the respect and admiration of his peers. Since taking on the mantle of chief executive of Bertelsmann in 2002, Dr. Thielen rapidly put into place a number of initiatives, beginning with a consolidation phase and moving to record growth, writes the AICGS. In 2004, Time Magazine named him one of its 25 Global Business Influentials.
Each year since 1994, the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) − a German-American research institute at Johns Hopkins University − has presented the award to honor an outstanding business figure who has demonstrated unique leadership in the international arena – leadership that has strengthened the ties that bind Germany/Europe and the United States. Previous recipients have come from major German or American companies with strong transatlantic presence and global operations. Former laureates include Heinrich von Pierer (Siemens), Alan G. Lafley (Procter & Gamble) and Sanford I. Weill (Citigroup), for whom German chancellor Gerhard Schröder held the laudation in 2003. |
