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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* | ||||||||||||||
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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) | ||||||||||||
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. |
Jay Crotts
EVP & CIO
Royal Dutch Shell
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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.
Beate Hofer
Interim CIO
Volkswagen
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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.
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.
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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.
Dominique Pardo
President of Global IT Services
Total
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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.
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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.
Ralf Schneider
Group CIO
Allianz
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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.
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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.
Vijay Ratnaparkhe
CIO
Robert Bosch
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