Hubertus M. Mühlhäuser

Mühlhäuser was brought up as the second born in an entrepreneurial family in Michelstadt, Germany. His father Heinz-Peter was managing director and 50% shareholder of Mühlhäuser GmbH & Co. KG and his mother Heide was a teacher. After finishing high school and his military service, Mühlhäuser studied at the European Business Schools (EBS) in Germany and London as well as the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE) and graduated with a Master in Business Administration from the European Business School in Germany.

During his studies, he did several internships (England, France, Spain, Taiwan, China, Argentina and Germany) and he is fluent in German, English, French and Spanish.

In 1996 Mühlhäuser started his career at Arthur D. Little in Zuerich, Switzerland as Business Analyst. He became the youngest partner in the history of Arthur D. Little at age 29, restructured the Swiss operations when being appointed Managing Director in 2001 and was a member of the firm´s global management team from 2000 to 2005. He was also a shareholder in the management buy out of Arthur D. Little, financed by Altran in 2003. Next to his management positions at Arthur D. Little, he was also developing consulting processes such as Ambition Driven Strategy^TM and was chair and active contributor or Prism, Arthur D. Little´s bi-annual publication on thought leadership, that was restarted under this leadership in 2003.

In September 2005 Mühlhäuser joined AGCO Corporation a US Fortune 500 and leader in agricultural machinery, as Officer and Senior Vice President of Strategy & Integration to drive change at AGCO Corporation. In addition to leading the strategy & integration function from 2005-2011, he assumed additional responsibilities for global information technology from 2006-2013 and for AGCO´s global engine business from 2007-2011 and AGCO´s business in Eastern Europe and Asia in from 2009-2011. In 2012 Mühlhäuser was appointed senior vice president & general manager of Europe Africa & Middle East.

In his seven years with AGCO Corporation the company grew net sales from 5.5 bn US$ in 2006 to 9.9bn in 2012 while operating profits increased nearly 10 times from 68.9 mln US$ in 2006 to 693 mln US$ in 2012. Mühlhäuser was also the driving force of AGCO´s growth in China, when several plants where opened and Chinese Shandong Dafeng was acquired in 2011. He also led AGCO´s growth strategy in Africa and participated in the G8 summit of 2012 on Africa to present AGCO´s vision for Africa.

Mühlhäuser left AGCO in September 2012.

In 2013 Mühlhäuser acquired the shares in the family business of his uncle and cousin and inherited the majority of the shares of his father and restructured as executive chairman the more than 100 year old maker of tunneling machinery. In 2014 Mühlhäuser acquired Obermann Systems and integrated the European leader of grouting and measurement systems in the family business. The management team was strengthened with the appointments of Markus Rechner as CEO, Rainer Oestreicher as CFO and Paul Zeder as COO. Also in 2014 Mühlhäuser founded Mühlhäuser Holding in Switzerland to consolidate the assets of the companies.

In 2015 Mühlhäuser stepped down as Managing Director of Mühlhäuser GmbH and became non-executive chairman of Mühlhäuser Holding in Switerzland.

In August 2015 Mühlhäuser was appointed CEO of Manitowoc Foodservice, a division of The Manitowoc Company, where he was also made officer. Mühlhäuser started a restructuring program and successfully spun off the business on March 4 of 2016, having raised 1.4bn US$ of debt to finance the spin off. With the spin off that was supported by large shareholders such as Carl Icahn and David Abrams, Mühlhäuser was appointed as Director, President & CEO of Manitowoc Foodservice. A year later in March 2017 the company was rebranded to Welbilt Inc. to go back to the original name of the business when the company was founded in 1926 by the Hirsch brothers.

Mühlhäuser is married to Sabine and they live with their three children in the Tampa Bay Area in Florida USA.