Management Board changes, CEO Uwe Ahrens to move to Supervisory Board


Uwe Ahrens, the company’s founder and longstanding CEO, is retiring from the Board on September 30, 2005. At next year’s Annual General Meeting aap Implantate AG’s Management and Supervisory Board will propose that he joins the Supervisory Board. Uwe Ahrens will continue to support the company in an advisory capacity on various projects.

Uwe Ahrens acquired the company in 1990 in a management buyout from Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Mecron. In the years that followed he managed aap so successfully that it became one of Germany’s leading companies in the field of osteosynthesis and in 1999 was the first German medical technology company to be listed in the Frankfurt stock exchange’s Neuer Markt segment.

With the takeover of the Mebio/Coripharm Group (bone cements, biomaterials) in 2000 and the enlargement of the product range in endoprosthetics, aap was able under his management to establish itself as a widely based enterprise in the field of orthopedics and traumatology.

The company’s financial difficulties, triggered by integration problems after the takeover of the Mebio/Coripharm Group, were surmounted by means of recapitalization and restructuring in 2004. With stabilization achieved and a substantial strengthening of the management the company has now reached a stage that enables Mr. Ahrens to retire from day-to-management and move to the Supervisory Board.

The aap Group’s employees, the Management Board and the Supervisory Board thank Mr. Ahrens for his successful development work and longstanding commitment, without which aap would not exist, and look forward to future cooperation on a different basis.

In the future, directors Oliver Bielenstein and Bruke Alemu will manage the company jointly.