GM Group Vice President and President, GM Europe

Carl-Peter Forster was GM Vice President and President of GM Europe, based in Zurich, Switzerland, from 2004 to 2009. Effective January 1, 2006, he was appointed GM Group Vice President and a member of the GM Automotive Strategy Board and took over the role as the senior-ranking executive for GM’s activities in Europe.  He has been Chairman of the Opel Supervisory Board since June, 2004 and Chairman of Saab since April, 2005.

Forster was born in London, U.K., on May 9, 1954 and raised in London, Bonn and Athens.  He holds a diploma in Economics from Bonn University and a degree in Aviation and Space Technology from Munich Technical University.

Carl-Peter Forster started his career in 1982 as a consultant for McKinsey & Company in Munich.  In 1986, he joined BMW where he held various leadership positions before becoming Managing Director of BMW South Africa in 1996 and the board member responsible for all vehicle development projects in 1999.

Prior to being appointed President of GM Europe and Chairman of the Opel Supervisory Board, Forster was Chairman and Managing Director of Opel from April 2001.  In his three years in that position, Forster initiated far-reaching restructuring programs and a major product offensive focusing on innovative design and industry-leading build quality.

Prof. Dr. Gerhard Fettweis studied electrical engineering at the Aachen University of Technololgy (RWTH) in Germany where he earned his Ph.D. degree in 1990. From 1990 to 1991, he was Visiting Scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA, developing signal processing innovations for IBM’s disk drive products. From 1991 to 1994, he was a Scientist with TCSI Inc., Berkeley, CA, responsible for signal processor development projects for mobile phone chip-sets. Since September 1994 he holds the Vodafone Chair at the Technische Universität in Dresden, Germany. In addition he cofounded Systemonic as CTO in 1999, which was successfully acquired by Philips Semiconductor (today: NXP) in December 2002. Now he is Chief Scientist of Philips Semiconductors BL-C. In 2000, a second start-up was spun-out of the Vodafone Chair: Radioplan delivers products and professional services related to 2.5G, 3G and 4G network development, planning and optimization. In 2003 a third startup was spun out: Signalion provides leading edge consulting, engineering & prototype development for signal processing and communications systems. The forth startup, InCircuit (2004) delivers custom electronic circuit solutions for signal processing products. The fifth startup, Dresden Silicon (2005), delivers media codec circuits and solutions for mobile devices. Gerhard Fettweis’ research at the Vodafone Chair focuses on new wireless communications systems for cellular and short range networks, and their hardware/software implementation.

Michael Fraedrich, born January 30th, 1953 in Heilbronn, has been member of the management board of WGZ BANK since August 2000. His main focus is on the following areas:

• back-office credit (incl. risk management)
• back-office trade
• legal services
• private equity
• compliance, money-laundering prevention, data protection

Michael Fraedrich got his first state law examination in law at the Justus-Liebig-University of Gießen. After his second state law examination for Law in 1980 he started to work for the Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (West LB), Düsseldorf, with focus on legal services, participations, leasing and special finance. From 1988 to 1992 he managed the legal services and participation division at WGZ-Bank eG, Düsseldorf. After that he joined the IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG, Düsseldorf and Berlin as head of the office of the managing board and legal services, later on central customer service and after that has become responsible for risk management and legal services.

In addition to his activities with ZMD Michael Fraerich is also member of the supervisory board of Union Investment Real Estate AG, Hamburg; of VBI Volksbank International AG, Vienna; of VR-LEASING AG, Eschborn as well as member of the Executive Committee of CIBP Confédération Internationale des Banques Populaires, Brussels.