Messer, the world's leading privately owned specialist for industrial, medical and specialty gases, has appointed two new board members. In addition to Bernd Eulitz as CEO, Helmut Kaschenz as CFO and Virginia Esly as COO Europe, Elena Skvortsova, and Werner Hickel now join the Executive Board. The three regions, Asia, Europe and the Americas, are thus represented on Messer's Management Board.

Elena Skvortsova will represent the Americas region on the Executive Board as COO Americas. She studied linguistics, international management and business and began her professional career in 1994 at Bayer AG in Germany. She moved to the USA in 2001 to work for Baxter International Inc., where she was most recently Vice President BioScience until 2015. Elena then switched to the industrial gases sector and held the position of President Middle East & Eastern Europe at Linde AG in Munich before taking over responsibility for Praxair's Canadian business until 2020. Most recently, she was on the Executive Board of OMV AG in Vienna, Austria.

Dr Werner Hickel, has taken over the position of COO Asia and will thus continue to be responsible for the business in China and the ASEAN countries. Werner Hickel holds a doctorate in physics, joined Messer in 1998 and was appointed Finance Director of Messer China in Shanghai in 2000. From 2003 to 2018 he was COO and later CEO of Messer China and since then CEO Messer China/ASEAN. He has 27 years of experience in the Asian market.