Austria's OMV welcomes a new CEO
Rainer Seele has plenty of work to do thanks to the oil price and legacies of the past
Austria’s biggest energy company, OMV, welcomed a German CEO on 1 July, after Gerhard Roiss surprised the company last year by announcing he would leave the company on 30 June. Rainer Seele, who succeeds him, will have his work cut out for him. Like many other embattled European utilities who were caught out by the recession, high oil prices, renewables and cheap coal, his new company is weighed down with legacies of the past. But at least its ownership structure – the governments of Austria and Abu Dhabi own 50.7% – means it is not an obvious takeover target. And it has a refineries business as a hedge.Seele was previously the head of Wintershall, the upstream subsidiary of German chemicals
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