German VNG Gets New CEO

German supplier Verbundnetz Gas (VNG) has named its new CEO and chairman, effective October 1. 

Ulf Heitmuller becomes CEO, having worked since 2010 for Germany’s third largest power group EnBW, which since April has a 74.2% controlling stake in Leipzig-based VNG. He is currently EnBW’s executive director of trading and supply. Prior to 2010 he headed Shell’s northwest European gas sales. 

Ulf Heitmuller takes over as VNG CEO on October 1 (Photo credit: VNG)

The management changes, announced September 5, also included the appointment of EnBW's finance chief Thomas Kusterer as VNG's new supervisory board chairman, a role held since November 2015 by Heitmuller. Kusterer joined EnBW in 2004, left in 2009 to become CFO at EDF Energy in London for two years, but rejoined EnBW as CFO in April 2011.

Karsten Heuchert, VNG’s CEO since 2010 who spent much of his prior career with BASF and Wintershall, is stepping down by mutual agreement.  

VNG shareholdings were restructured in April 2016 following an agreement reached six months earlier by EnBW and others to end a legal dispute.

EnBW is jointly controlled by the southwest German state of Baden-Wurttemberg and a consortium of local municipalities, each with 46.75%, and remains one of the country’s largest nuclear generators; since 2012 it has contracted to buy 1.9bn m³/yr from Novatek’s Swiss trading business.

VNG supplied 34.7bn m³ in 2015. It procured 34.4bn m³ – of which 5.3bn m³ long-term contractual Russian gas, 3.9bn m³ from Norway, and 25.2bn m³ mainly from the spot market; it also owns gas storage, the Ontras gas transmission business, and some upstream assets offshore Norway.

Mark Smedley