adidas’s supervisory board has appointed Birgit Kretschmer to the company’s Executive Board effective September 1, 2026. She will succeed Harm Ohlmeyer as chief financial officer by the end of the year, after Ohlmeyer informed the supervisory board he would not extend his mandate beyond his current contract term. Ohlmeyer, who has spent nearly 30 years at adidas and has served as CFO since 2017, worked closely with chief executive Bjørn Gulden and the supervisory board on succession planning.
Kretschmer’s appointment gives the Executive Board a finance chief with direct retail operating experience at a moment when cost discipline remains central to that strategy.
Kretschmer brings more than 30 years of finance experience and returns to adidas after 25 years at the company across several senior roles, including CFO of adidas International BV, CFO of adidas Western Europe, and senior vice president of Corporate & Operations Finance, where she oversaw accounting, treasury, M&A and operative controlling.
She was part of adidas’s finance leadership team from 2012 and sat on the company’s executive committee between 2017 and 2020. For the past six years, she has served as CFO of C&A, a Netherlands-headquartered vertically integrated fashion retailer active across Europe. She also holds supervisory board seats at listed companies Ceconomy and MisterSpex, where she chairs the audit committee.
Gulden said Kretschmer’s tenure at C&A had given her added expertise in cost discipline as CFO of a vertically integrated retailer, calling her the right successor given her knowledge of adidas and the industry. Effective January 1, 2027, adidas’s Executive Board will comprise Gulden, Kretschmer, Michelle Robertson and Mathieu Sidokpohou.
