Europe’s top 20 business CIOs of 2020

Who are the biggest names in IT management in Europe? Our annual ranking profiles the CIOs at the continent’s largest companies. 

 

See our exclusive infographic: The characteristics of Europe’s top 20 business CIOs

The coronavirus pandemic has forced many of the CIOs at Europe’s top companies to reassess their current priorities. Many digital transformation programs have been accelerated due to the enforced change in working habits, while, for many companies, key elements of operational IT have moved from within the office to the cloud or home. 

This year’s top 20 European CIOs have had to deal with this unforeseen disruption by bringing innovative technology solutions to the fore. Many faces on this year’s list will be familiar to readers of our previous annual surveys, with Shell CIO Jay Crotts retaining his position at the top of the table. However, there are a number of new additions, with four moving into the top IT job at their current company this year.  

Among the group of newcomers are the only two women to feature in the top 20 — Hanna Hennig of Siemens and Beate Hofer, interim CIO of Volkswagen. Although this slightly improves the gender balance compared to our previous list, in 2018, it underlines the lack of change in representation for women at the very top of IT in Europe.

In terms of industry representation, energy companies still dominate, claiming six spots in the table. Europe’s automotive sector is also well represented, with CIOs from five manufacturers featuring.  

As the ranking shows, Germany is the home for the largest number of Top 20 European business CIOs, with seven companies headquartered in the country, followed by France, Switzerland and the UK. 

 

EUROPE’S TOP ENTERPRISE CIOS*
Company (HQ)	Revs (€bn)	Head of IT
1. Royal Dutch Shell (NL/UK)	308.0	Jay Crotts
2. Volkswagen (Germany)	252.6	Beate Hofer
3. BP (UK)	252.4	Steve Fortune
4. Vitol (Switzerland)	200.9	Gerard Delsad
5. Glencore (Switzerland)	192.1	Michael Moore (co-head) Derek Wayland (co-head)
6. Total (France)	178.9	Dominique Pardo
7. Daimler (Germany)	172.7	Jan Brecht
8. Allianz (Germany)	142.4	Ralf Schneider
9. Rosneft Oil (Russia)	119.7	Andrey Shishkin
10. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (Italy)	108.2	Gilberto Ceresa
11. BMW (Germany)	104.2	Alexander Buresch
12. AXA (France)	103.5	Marc Blottière
13. Nestlé (Switzerland)	92.6	Filippo Catalano
14. Siemens (Germany)	86.8	Hanna Hennig
15. Deutsche Telekom (Germany)	80.5	Peter Leukert
16. Enel (Italy)	80.3	Carlo Bozzoli
17. Aviva (UK)	80.1	Nick Amin
18. Robert Bosch Group (Germany)	77.7	Vijay Ratnaparkhe
19.Groupe PSA (France)	74.7	Jean-Luc Perrard
20. Carrefour (France)	74.1	Miguel González
* CIOs at the 20 largest European-headquartered companies, based on last reported annual revenues. Currency conversions averaged over companies' fiscal year, unless directly specified. Exclusions: As a holding company, Exor group has been excluded from the list. The revenues of Russian oil companies Lukoil and Gazprom places them in the top 20 but neither was able to provide details on their current CIO.

1
Jay Crotts
EVP & CIO
Royal Dutch Shell

Jay Crotts is a veteran of Royal Dutch Shell, with 34 years at the company and nearly a decade in the global CIO role. In this time, he has overseen some of the company’s largest IT and business transformation programs, led operations and been a CIO of regional and divisional units. As EVP and group CIO, Crotts controls a multi-billion dollar budget and more than 8,000 staff and contractors to oversee the multinational energy company’s IT function. His career has taken him to Houston, London and, most recently, the company’s headquarters in The Hague. Crotts believes that “product innovation and technology is at the forefront of all Shell’s operations” and during his time as CIO, Shell’s digital transformation strategy has included the introduction of automation in oil field production and machine learning to optimize the energy grid.

 

2
Beate Hofer
Interim CIO
Volkswagen

Beate Hofer stepped up to the position of CIO at Volkswagen in April to replace the outgoing Martin Hofmann, who had spent 19 years with the automotive manufacturer. She takes over the role on an interim basis and was previously head of group information security — a position she had held since 2016. During Hofer’s 19 years with the company, she has worked in a variety of business functions, including e-business infrastructure, head of IT procurement and planning and head of application management services. It is anticipated that Volkswagen will begin looking for a new permanent CIO in the coming months.

3
Steve Fortune
CIO
BP

Steve Fortune took over as CIO of BP from Michael Gibbs, who retired in 2016. Fortune is responsible for all information technology and services globally. During his time in the role, he has overseen the energy giant’s move away from ownership of many of its European data centers, which involved migrating more than 900 applications to AWS, as well as continuing BP’s wider digital transformation agenda. He began his career with the company in 1991, as a chemical engineer, and has since held the positions of CIO for BP Mexico and for the company’s upstream operations.

4
Gerard Delsad
CIO
Vitol

Gerard Delsad holds several management positions within the Swiss-headquartered energy and commodity trading company Vitol. In addition to his responsibilities as CIO, he is a member of the Vitol Group board, chairman of its environmental, social and corporate governance committee and managing director of Vitol Geneva. Delsad joined Vitol in September 1996 from professional services firm KPMG, although he began his career at Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

5
Michael Moore
Co-head of IT
Glencore
Michael Moore was promoted to the position of co-head of IT in November 2015 alongside Glencore colleague Derek Wayland. Moore, who joined the Switzerland-headquartered mining and commodity trading group in 2006, draws on more than 20 years’ experience in technology.  Prior to taking on the role, he led the corporate IT function, overseeing the large, complex IT integration that followed Glencore’s 2013 merger with mining group Xstrata. Before joining Glencore, Moore spent eight years within the IT services group at multinational logistics company DHL, where he was principal system architect and senior software architect.


Derek Wayland
Co-head of IT
Glencore
Derek Wayland was made co-head of IT at Glencore in November 2015, alongside colleague Michael Moore, having first joined the international mining and commodity trading group in 2002. Wayland brings more than 20 years’ trading experience to the position, having previously worked at Barclays de Zoete Wedd in London and CIBC World Markets in Canada, where he was a director of foreign exchange systems.

6
Dominique Pardo
President of Global IT Services
Total

As president of Global IT Services at Total, Dominique Pardo leads a team of 5,000 IT professionals located around the world — from Houston and Singapore to the energy company’s HQ in Paris. Taking on the role in 2014, one of Pardo’s early accomplishments was reducing the internal technology costs of the multinational company by 30% over just 18 months. Having obtained a master’s degree in AI in the early 1980s, he has helped to push forward the application of the technology in several of Total’s business areas such as predictive maintenance, refining and oil and gas exploration. The launch of Total’s new Digital Factory at the start of this year has also provided Pardo with opportunities to explore new use cases for emerging technologies.

7
Jan Brecht
CIO
Daimler

Jan Brecht came to Daimler from Adidas, where he oversaw the sportswear brand’s IT and logistics responsibilities as CIO and head of its global supply chain. His appointment in 2015 marked a return to the German car company, as he previously worked in Daimler’s IT department in the 1990s. One notable aspect of Brecht’s tenure as CIO has been the introduction of the TwiceAsFast initiative, which looks for ways to increase speed and innovation within the company. Key to this change in working practice has been a shift to DevOps practices and the increased use of open source software, the speeding up of software releases through cloud optimization and APIs, and a universal upskilling program for Daimler’s IT team.

 

8
Ralf Schneider
Group CIO
Allianz

Ralf Schneider has served as Allianz Group’s CIO since 2010. He joined the insurance and financial service provider in 1995 and has held various management roles in IT, including CIO of Allianz Germany and IT board member at Allianz Managed Operations and Services. Top of Schneider’s priorities has been building more secure systems to address the growing cybersecurity threat. He is also a proponent of more flexible and collaborative management structures — a change which he predicts all CxOs will soon have to address.

9
Andrey Shishkin
Vice president for informatization, innovation and localization
Rosneft

Andrey Shishkin has been part of the management board of Russian oil group Rosneft since 2012. In November 2019 he received the new title of vice president for informatization, innovation and localization. Shishkin’s core role involves leading the implementation of advanced, business-value generating technologies at the state-owned company, where he is also in charge of the modernization of its existing IT. Shishkin was previously Russia’s deputy minister of energy from 2010 to 2012.

10
Gilberto Ceresa
Head of global connectivity and CIO for EMEA and Latin America
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles
Gilberto Ceresa, head of IT for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) in EMEA and Latin America, has been with the Fiat Group since 1989. He views his role as helping to digitalize the flow from design to factory and, ultimately, the customer. During his 31-year career with the Italian automotive giant he has held a broad set of roles, including head of IT for international activities in Eastern Europe, Turkey, South America, Asia and Africa. In 2004 he became executive coordinator of Group Executive Council activities for the Fiat Group Automobiles (FGA) Management Team and CNH, Fiat’s agricultural and construction equipment maker, and in 2007 took on additional roles as head of IT for FGA and IT coordinator for the Fiat Group.

11
Alexander Buresch
CIO
BMW
Alexander Buresch joined the BMW Group in 1998 and — after holding positions at BMW Bank GmbH and BMW Financial Services — went on to head up global financial systems and the IT strategy of the German car manufacturer. Buresch stepped into the position of CIO and SVP of BMW Group IT in January 2020. His approach to the role has seen a sharper focus on the integration of IT into the wider business using BizDevOps practices. He is promoting the reduction of complexity and variants through standardized and open platform technologies, while at the same time increasing IT stability and scalability.

12
Marc Blottière
Group CIO
AXA
Marc Blottière has had a long career with AXA. He first joined the French insurance company in 1990, after nine years with telecommunications company Orange and has since held a number of senior management positions in France, Singapore and Japan. One of his key achievements was setting up AXA Tech — a new service organization to manage the business’ IT infrastructure worldwide. More recently, as COO of AXA Asia, Blottière was tasked with transforming IT and operations within the region across all lines of business. Now, as Group CIO, he is in charge of AXA’s global IT strategy and works from the company’s headquarters in Paris.

13
Filippo Catalano
Nestlé
CIO

Filippo Catalano joined the world’s largest consumer packaged goods (CPG) company in 2015 as chief digital operations officer and has been CIO since January 2018. He previously spent 16 years with rival CPG company Procter & Gamble in several positions across the IT and digital innovation departments. As head of digital operations, Catalano helped set up Nestlé’s Global IT Hub in Barcelona. The 500-person team is focused on developing customer-facing applications, consumer data analytics, media and marketing tech. Nestlé’s IT department can now boast it has launched more than 2,000 websites and 100 mobile apps, while looking after IT systems for over 300,000 internal users.

14
Hanna Hennig
CIO
Siemens AG

With over 25 years’ experience in IT, including as CIO of German lightbulb manufacturer Osram and head of IT at electricity company E.ON, Hanna Hennig has helped several companies along their digital transformation journeys. She joined German engineering company Siemens at the start of 2020, replacing CIO Helmuth Ludwig. Hennig’s stated goal is to support the company with innovative, flexible and secure platforms to help execute its future ambitions.

15
Peter Leukert
CIO
Deutsch Telekom
Peter Leukert became CIO of Deutsche Telekom in January 2017. He began his career at McKinsey & Company where he helped to found the company’s Business Technology Office. He has experience as a CIO at several companies, including Germany’s second-largest bank Commerzbank. Prior to moving to Deutsche Telekom, Leukert co-founded New York-based fintech investment firm Motive Partners. As CIO of Deutsch Telekom, Leukert is driving the IT transformation towards faster time-to-market delivery, a modern decoupled IT architecture and innovation through cross-functional and agile teams.


16
Carlo Bozzoli
Head of global digital solutions
Enel

Carlo Bozzoli was appointed head of global digital solutions at Enel in 2014. His 36 years with the Italian energy company began at one of its thermal power plants and has included roles leading business process reengineering, ERP integration, smart meter roll-out and IT delivery. As global CIO, Bozzoli manages more than 2,600 people in 21 countries. During three years in the position, he has overseen the transition of infrastructure to the cloud and an organizational shift to agile methods. He was also behind the ICT department’s renaming to global digital solutions, part of a move to reposition digital technology and data at the core of the business.

 

17
Nick Amin
Interim chief operations and IT officer
Aviva

Nick Amin first joined Aviva in 2013 as group transformation director. He went on to take the merged role of chief operations and IT officer. Although he briefly served as interim CEO of the insurance company’s operations in Ireland last year, Amin returned as interim COO and head of IT in mid-2020 following a management reshuffle. He has had an international career, which has seen him work in senior positions for health insurance firm Cigna in Latin America and Asia as well as in a number of management roles at Citibank within Europe.

 

18
Vijay Ratnaparkhe
CIO
Robert Bosch

Vijay Ratnaparkhe succeeded Elmar Pritsch as CIO of Robert Bosch in September 2019, managing a budget of €1.5 billion ($1.2bn) and a team of 7,500. One of his key tasks in the new role is to further develop the German engineering and technology firm’s IoT platform. His previous roles with the company include SVP for engineering and as president of Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions, the company’s India-based tech subsidiary. Ratnaparkhe originally joined Bosch from Infosys Canada.

19
Jean-Luc Perrard
Group CIO
PSA Group
Jean-Luc Perrard has worked in various business and technology roles at PSA Group for more than 20 years. He became CIO of the French automobile manufacturer — best known for its Peugeot and Citroën brands — in 2014. Although his earlier roles included CTO for group infrastructure and director of systems for R&D and engineering, before becoming CIO Perrard spent three years as general manager at the PSA’s plant in Rennes, where the Peugeot 5008 and Citroën C5 are manufactured. 

20
Miguel González
Global CTO
Carrefour
Miguel González built his career working in a range of consultancy and partner roles at EY, McKinsey & Company and Gartner, helping CxO clients implement technology modernization and digital transformation programs. González became global CTO of French retail giant Carrefour in 2019. His overall goal is to accelerate Carrefour’s transformation into a retail tech company. As his Carrefour blog states, he is “an international entrepreneur with a genuine passion for hardcore tech [whose] obsession is to put tech at the service of customers.”