Status: 06.09.2021 3:44 p.m.
The drugstore chain Rossmann gets a new boss. Founder and managing director Dirk Roßmann retires. In the future, the billionaire wants to pursue a hobby that has absolutely nothing to do with soap and baby food.
Dirk Roßmann gives up his post as managing director of the drugstore chain Rossmann. Dirk Rossmann GmbH announced this at the headquarters in Burgwedel near Hanover one day before the entrepreneur’s 75th birthday. He would retire from business on September 30th, it said. According to the company, his younger son Raoul Roßmann (36) will be the spokesman for the Rossmann management team.
The Roßmann family continue to carry out “a smooth handover of corporate responsibility,” announced the company. Raoul Roßmann has been responsible for and shaped the operative business of drugstores for several years, and has been Managing Director for Purchasing and Marketing since 2015. Alice Schardt-Roßmann, Michael Rybak and Peter Dreher are also on the management board.
More than ten billion in sales
The drugstore chain is active with more than 4200 branches in Germany and seven other European countries. Last year the company had sales of around ten billion euros and employed more than 56,000 people. This puts Rossmann just behind his toughest competitor dm drogerie markt from Karlsruhe. Dirk Roßmann founded the company in 1972 shortly before the price fixing for drugstore items was lifted.
Despite his withdrawal, Roßmann remains on the advisory board of the Rossmann drugstores as well as managing director and spokesman for Rossmann Beteiligungs GmbH, which is 100 percent family owned by Roßmann and his sons Daniel and Raoul. The GmbH holds a share of 60 percent in the drugstore. The Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa holds the remaining 40 percent through a subsidiary.
In the future, Roßmann would increasingly dedicate himself to writing, the company announced. His second novel, a thriller entitled “The Wrath of the Octopus”, is expected to appear in October.