PUMA chief commercial officer Matthias Bäumer will leave the German sportswear group’s executive board on Sept. 30 for personal reasons, the company said, with no successor yet named. Chief executive Arthur Hoeld will take over sales and subsidiary oversight on an interim basis until a replacement is appointed.
The departure extends a leadership rebuild that has now touched finance, e-commerce and sports marketing since Hoeld set out his turnaround strategy last October. Just two days earlier, PUMA named Nike veteran Steve Cecchini senior vice president of sports marketing, following the April hire of Mark Langer as chief financial officer and the July appointment of Dusan Hamlin to lead global e-commerce, a role that reported directly to Bäumer.
Bäumer joined PUMA in 2007 as sales director for Germany and the Benelux countries. Two years later he became general manager for the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), a post he held for a decade, before leading PUMA’s global Team Sport business unit and then joining the executive board as chief commercial officer. He previously worked in the consumer goods and automotive industries. Bäumer will continue at PUMA in an advisory capacity and will keep his seat representing the company on the supervisory board of German football club Borussia Dortmund.
From Oct. 1, PUMA’s executive board will comprise Hoeld as chief executive, Langer as chief financial officer, Maria Valdes as chief brand officer and Andreas Hubert as chief operating officer, pending the appointment of a new chief commercial officer.
