Berlin, September 9th, 2019 – Dr Claudia Conen will be taking over as the new Managing Director of the Bundesverband Deutscher Leasing-Unternehmen (BDL – the German Leasing Association) on 1 January 2020. She will succeed Horst Fittler, who at the end of the year is retiring from the position he has held since 2010.
Dr Conen, 43, currently works for the Association of German Public Banks (Bundesverband Öffentlicher Banken), whose “Development Activities and Financing” section she heads. In this capacity, she is responsible for SME financing. Dr Conen, a native of Erfurt, was formerly a member of the central staff of the KfW Bank Group, where she was active in the fields of European Affairs and Financial Market Regulation.
Having obtained a doctorate in commercial law, Dr Conen began her working career as a research assistant for a Member of the European Parliament, before specializing in banking and capital-markets law after taking up an appointment as a transaction lawyer with an international corporate law firm. As a member of the executive committee of the all-party grouping the Europa-Union Deutschland (the German section of the Union of European Federalists), she has up until now served as the spokeswoman for the Union’s European Economic Policy Working Group. She also represents the Europa-Union on the board of the ZDF, one of Germany’s main public-service television broadcasters.
“I am delighted that in Dr Conen we have found a new Managing Director who brings with her experience of representing federations, as well as wide-ranging expertise in the fields of SME financing and financial-market regulation,” commented BDL President Kai Ostermann enthusiastically on the announcement of the appointment.
The Bundesverband Deutscher Leasing-Unternehmen represents the interests of the leasing industry in Germany. Its membership of 150 leasing companies accounts for around 90 percent of the volume of the country’s leasing market. The German leasing sector is very much the domain of small and medium-sized enterprises. The value of leased assets in Germany currently stands at well over 200 billion euro. The volume of new business acquired by the leasing sector is in the region of 70 billion euro, which makes it Germany’s largest investor. Leasing is used as a financing tool in just about every sector of the economy. The sector’s customer base comprises businesses of all kinds, from freelancers and the self-employed to medium-sized companies and international concerns.