Corporate Senior Vice President and Financial Director of Henkel´s Cosmetics/Toiletries business, Carsten Knobel will succeed Lothar Steinebach as chief financial officer of Henkel on July 1, 2012. Steinebach will retire end of June 2012 after more than 30 years of service with Henkel serving since 2003 on the Management Board as executive vice president and chief financial officer.

From 1998, he held several management positions in Finance/Controlling and International Marketing, including the post-merger integration in the US after the acquisition of Dial Corp. In 2006 he took over responsibility for Group Strategy and Corporate Controlling. Since 2009, he has been Financial Director for the Cosmetics/Toiletries business of Henkel. Knobel graduated from Technical University of Berlin with a degree in Business Administration and Technical Chemistry and started his career with Henkel in 1995 in R&D.

“We are pleased to name Carsten as a highly-qualified and experienced successor to our Chief Financial Officer. This decision is testament to our strong talent pipeline and people development at Henkel. It is also in line with our tradition to decide timely on upcoming changes at the Management Board,” said Kasper Rorsted, chief executive officer of Henkel.