He likes rowing, art and his convertible, but not the big show. In doing so, Thomas Olemotz brought the IT service provider forward a lot.
Bechtle shareholders will get a little more dividend this year. And bonus shares. The calculation: The share price then drops for a short time because the number of shares triples – but the low price level then attracts new investors, for whom the Bechtle share, at 160 euros per share, previously seemed too expensive.
Once again, completely silently, Bechtle is making itself a little more attractive, as it has been all these years. A small Swabian IT shop has grown into a company with 12,000 employees and a turnover of 5.8 billion euros.
The man behind this success story is called Thomas Olemotz. At the end of 2009, when he had completed his first year as CEO of Bechtle, Bechtle was worth 395 million euros on the stock exchange. Twelve years later – Olemotz is still running the company with the same team – it was just under 7.5 billion euros, an increase of 1,800 percent.
The convertible is as old as he is
If Thomas Olemotz wanted, he would long ago be passed through talk shows and booked at congresses for lectures on his recipe for success. But apparently he doesn’t want to. It is okay with him if you don’t make a fuss about himself.
He doesn’t seem obdurate or flirtatious like some celebs who are careful about their privacy. You can find out from Thomas Olemotz that he likes to visit art exhibitions and the opera, and also that he owns a Mercedes convertible that is as old as himself, built in 1962.
The father of two shares his joy in the family and his anticipation of the second grandchild. And he makes no secret of the fact that the Swabians in Heilbronn know that he is a passionate rower, but not as extraordinarily talented.
Without a show
The way Olemotz leads Bechtle fits this private life one-to-one: down-to-earth, persistent, long-term oriented, also versatile, but without glamor, without show. If it had a Swabian accent, then it could be seen as a prime example of one of those entrepreneurs who quietly develop their companies in the south-west German province into world market leaders. Olemotz is not only not a Swabian (he comes from the Gießen area, where he studied business administration after completing a banking apprenticeship), he is also not an entrepreneur, but an employed manager: of 42 million Bechtle shares, he only owns 1,400 shares.
Olemotz joined Bechtle in 2007 as CFO and was then appointed boss as the successor to the company’s founders. Olemotz ‘previous positions seem like a straightforward preparation for this entrepreneurial task: After completing his doctorate, he was first assistant to the board at West LB, then at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Mittelstandsberatung, where he was responsible for the mergers and acquisitions segment; afterwards he managed corporate development for Delton AG, the holding company of the Quandt family.
Management on sight, possibly with a view to one’s own commission, would be out of the question at Bechtle. Long-term “visions” have been used there since 1988. Back then, the very first vision was: by the year 2000, sales of 100 million euros and an IPO should be achieved. In 2008, when Olemotz was already CFO, Bechtle set itself a turnover of 5 billion euros for 2020 and an EBIT margin of 5 percent.