Biography | Herbert Hainer — Named Adidas CEO on 8 March 2001

People treat a fifteen-year CEO run as a job that begins on a stage.

This one began in a supervisory-board room and took effect on a Thursday in March.

On 31 January 2001 the supervisory board of Adidas-Salomon named Herbert Hainer chairman of the executive board, succeeding Robert Louis-Dreyfus.

HORIZONT reported the vote the next morning. Women's Wear Daily dated 1 February 2001 recorded the same decision and the same start date: 8 March 2001.

Hainer was 46. He had been deputy chairman and chief operating officer. The COO title was retired in the new structure.

Christian Tourres left the board with Louis-Dreyfus. Finance chief Robin Stalker joined it.

The work that followed is measured in public company numbers, not adjectives. Manager Magazin's 2017 portrait put 2000 group sales near 6.1 billion euros and 2016 sales near 19.3 billion, with last-year profit near one billion.

Those figures belong to annual reports, not to folklore. The visitor should treat magazine rounding as a guide, then read the filings.

In 2006 the company bought Reebok for about 3.1 billion euros, a deal later sold on at a lower price. In 2002 adidas took a minority stake in FC Bayern Munchen AG, a step the club's own biography later tied to the Allianz Arena project.

He left the chair in September 2016. Kasper Rorsted, then of Henkel, was named successor that January.

The pin is the registered headquarters at Adi-Dassler-Strasse 1. The glass the visitor photographs is later than 2001. The legal address is the same town.

Photo: Felix Reimann, GNU Free Documentation License / CC, via Wikimedia Commons, Adidas factory outlet in Herzogenaurach, 14 January 2006