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Melanie Kreis in Management Board of Deutsche Post

A woman will now be responsible for finances on the Board of Deutsche Post. The company has announced the appointment by the Supervisory Board of 45-year-old Melanie Kreis as the successor to Lawrence Rosen. According to Fidar, the German organisation campaigning to get more women onto supervisory boards, just under ten per cent of top management positions in Dax companies are held by women. The previous Chief Financial Officer of Deutsche Post, who held the position for over seven years, announced that he was stepping down for private reasons.

Lufthansa, by contrast, is losing its Chief Financial Officer, Simone Menne. In a statement the company announced that the 55-year-old has requested an early termination of her contract with effect from 31 August. The graduate in business administration had worked her way up at Lufthansa since 1989 and on 1 July, 2012 became the company's first ever female Chief Financial Officer.

An increase in the percentage of women on DAX supervisory boards

An increasing number of women are being appointed to the supervisory boards of German public limited companies. Nonetheless, the figure remains some way short of the legally required ratio of 30%, according to the auditing and consulting firm PWC in Frankfurt. According to PWC, since 2011 the ratio of women on the supervisory boards of the 30 companies listed on the DAX index of leading German companies has risen by ten percentage points to 23.4 per cent. With voluntary commitments having proved ineffective, the German government is now seeking to make the upper echelons of German industry more female by law. From 2016 the supervisory boards of listed companies are expected to have a female to male ratio of 30 per cent. At present this 30 per cent mark is exceeded by ten of the 30 DAX companies – with half achieving a ratio of 20 per cent at the most. According to the PWC survey, the consumer goods maker Henkel currently has the highest ratio, with women occupying 7 of 16 positions on its supervisory board. Munich Re has 8 female supervisory board members of a total of 20, with Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Lufthansa each reporting seven female members on their 20-strong boards. Fresenius SE and Fresenius Medical Care have no female supervisory board members.

Everyone loves Caparros

Alain Caparros, CEO of Rewe, is Germany's most popular boss, according to the job and career community Glassdoor. The portal identified the ten highest rated CEOs based on the input of employees who voluntarily provide anonymous feedback on its site. In second and third places were Harald Krüger of BMW and Mark Weinberger of Ernst & Young. The Employees' Choice Awards were conferred for the second time.