Hans Georg Näder, born on September 4, 1961 in Duderstadt, Germany, is the current CEO of the Otto Bock group of companies. The company is the global market leader in the field of prosthetics. The empire is vast: the entire Otto Bock Group employs over 8000 people worldwide in nearly 60 countries. In 2019, it also generated sales in excess of 1 billion euros.
The company was founded in Berlin in 1919 by Otto Bock, the grandfather of Hans Georg Näder. This laid the foundation for one of the strongest companies in Germany. The economic growth was enormous. After Max Näder, the father of Hans Georg Näder, married Otto Bock’s daughter Maria in 1943, who would also become an important part of the company’s history, he founded Otto Bock Orthopädische Industrie GmbH in Duderstadt in 1947.
In 1990, the time had finally come: Max Näder handed over the business to his son. At just 28 years old, Hans Georg Näder is now CEO of the billion-dollar company. The criticisms from outside are great. “How is such a young guy with no orthopedic technical training, who has just graduated, supposed to run such a large company?” Admittedly, these thoughts are not entirely unjustified. But Näder had better prove it to all the critics. Under his leadership, the company continued to develop rapidly. With the turn of the millennium in mind, Näder introduced new fields of operation. These included, for example, the field of EDP technology. This was to be the foundation stone for the digitalization service provider Sycor. Otto Bock Holding GmbH was now positioned in the fields of health care, plastics and IT, and was thus able to demonstrate and realize enormous growth potential. The figures mentioned at the beginning reflect this success.
As a shareholder, Näder is free to decide whether and how much money he wants to take out of the company for private purposes. In the last ten years, this has amounted to almost half a billion euros. In some years, withdrawals of capital were even higher than the profit generated. In 2012, the company posted a profit of 10.8 million euros. In contrast to Näder’s withdrawal of around 50 million euros, however, this amount is vanishingly small. In 2015, Näder took out almost twice that amount again. This is not without consequences: The equity ratio continued to fall over the years, until it was finally only 15.5 percent. Näder should know from his business studies that the equity ratio is one of the most important key figures and an indicator of the stability of a company. Business Insider 7 July 2021
While the company’s equity ratio continues to fall, Hans Georg Näder’s assets continue to rise. According to Forbes, his fortune is estimated at around three billion euros in 2022. This makes him one of the 1,000 richest people in the world. In Germany, the 60-year-old even managed to secure a place in the top 100.
The life of the Duderstädter is expensive: His hobbies include sailing on a large scale. His sailing yacht, the “Pink Gin VI” holds the world record for the longest sailing ship in the world made of carbon with a length of almost 54 meters. At the moment, however, the 45-million yacht is for sale. Business Insider 17 September 2020