Club Lunch: Doing Business In China: The New Normal with Chinese Characteristics

MONDAY, APRIL 13, 2015
12:30PM for 12:45PM – LUNCH
1:15PM – ADDRESS
1ST FLOOR

Speaker: Dr. Martin Brudermüller
Vice Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, BASF SE

In 1885, when BASF sent a director to China for the first time, it was considered a distant and exotic country. Yet how different were things? While China had become the world’s second largest economy and aws transforming from workbench to innovation powerhouse, it was instructive to examine the elements of doing in business in China that have remained consistent – because these were also the least likely to change in the next century. The speaker traced how doing business in China had evolved over 130 years – and what we could expect to change (and not to change) in the future.

His overview draw from a new history of BASF in China, recently compiled in a book titled “Breaking New Ground.” The book was published on the occasion of BASF’s 150th anniversary and was based on two years of research, including interviews with current and former employees of BASF in Germany and in China as well as unprecedented access to the BASF corporate archive.

Dr. Martin Brudermüller was appointed Vice Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE in 2011. He was also responsible for the Asia Pacific region, headquartered in Hong Kong, and for the Performance Materials division. He had been a member of the Board of Executive Directors since 2006.