HANS LERCH, Vice Chairman, Hotelplan

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HANS LERCH, Vice Chairman, Hotelplan

Hans Lerch has spent 35 years in the travel and tourism industry, in many different positions but always in the same company, and worked for Kuoni Travel Holding Ltd. from 1970 to 2005.

He has a very international management background, was stationed in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore for a total of 13 years and has turned around and built up businesses world-wide including the Far East, Switzerland, Scandinavia and the United States. The most notable international expansion step he was directly responsible for was Kuoni's move into India. By acquiring two companies in 1996 and 2000, Kuoni India is today the undisputed market leader employing more than 3,500 staff.

Hans Lerch was a member of Kuoni’s Executive Board from 1995 and its President and Group CEO from July 1999 until January 2005. After differences with a board of directors which was completely exchanged in 2002, he decided to step down as CEO in 2005 but was asked to stay on as a non-executive director.

Hans Lerch resigned after less than a year when he accepted the role of Group CEO at SR Technics after having been that company’s Vice Chairman for 3 years.

SR Technics is the former Swissair maintenance department which became an independent company in 1997 and was taken over by the private equity firms 3i and Star Capital Partners in 2002, after Swissair’s bankruptcy. When Hans Lerch accepted the CEO position in September 2005, he agreed with the owners to lead the company through an exit, look for a successor and then step down again. In late 2006, SR Technics was sold to a consortium of investors from the Gulf region and until Hans Lerch finally stepped down in March 2008 he also chaired the Board of Directors.
He is 59 years old, has own investments in tourism related companies and ventures and, besides some smaller mandates, is a member of the Board of Directors of Kühne + Nagel International, Vice Chairman of New Venturetec, also a publicly quoted company in Zurich and a Senior Advisor to the Board of Alpitours in Italy.

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