SAP AG has announced the appointment of SAP Deputy CEO Léo Apotheker as the company’s co-CEO alongside SAP CEO Henning Kagermann, effective immediately.

The supervisory board also appointed to the SAP Executive Board three new members, effective July 1, 2008: Corporate Officers Erwin Gunst, Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe.

"Henning Kagermann requested that the supervisory board appoint Léo Apotheker as co-CEO in order to prepare him as successor in the best possible way during the remainder of Henning’s tenure," said Hasso Plattner, SAP co-founder and supervisory board chairman. "The supervisory board today followed his request. After years of massive investments and the successful launch of trendsetting innovations in the areas of service-oriented architecture, new solutions and business models for the midmarket, the use of main memory databases and modern analytics as well as state-of-the-art user interfaces, SAP now faces the task of boosting the application of these innovations among our customers and end users. With Bill McDermott, Jim Hagemann Snabe and Erwin Gunst, three proven market experts will gain executive board functions. In my view, facing these challenges together with the new executive team, Léo Apotheker is an ideal CEO and thus my preferred successor for Henning Kagermann."