Bernd Pischetsrieder

Bernd Pischetsrieder is a German automobile engineer and manager, born in Munich in 1948, who studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Munich and began his career at BMW in 1973 as a production planning engineer. He was chairman of the board of BMW from 1993 through 1999, a period marked by the 1994 purchase of the Rover Group from British Aerospace, which brought the Mini and Land Rover marques into BMW ownership but drained its finances before Rover was sold in 2000, and by BMW's assumption of the Rolls-Royce marque. He joined Volkswagen Group in 2000, ran SEAT, and chaired Volkswagen AG from April 2002 until he stepped down at the end of 2006, a tenure in which the share price rose by 80 percent. He has also sat on boards including Tetra Laval, Daimler and Munich Re.