Just a few days ago, they celebrated the resurrection of the business that had collapsed during the pandemic: Roland Fleck and Peter Ottmann, the managing directors of NürnbergMesse. For twelve years, the former economics officer for the city of Nuremberg and the former head of communications for the trade fair company have worked as a well-rehearsed duo. Now, however, it’s being torn up – and that doesn’t come as a complete surprise.
“For personal reasons,” Fleck, 61, is said to be retiring on July 31. From now on, Ottmann will be the sole manager of the company, which is supported by the Free State and the City of Nuremberg, and which has blossomed into one of the 15 largest trade fair companies in the world over the past three decades. The background to Fleck’s decision is a life-threatening illness that put him out of action for several months in 2018/2019. In 2021, the contracts of the dual leadership were extended again, with it already transpiring that Fleck’s contract was shorter than Ottmann’s.
Before moving to the top of the trade fair company, Fleck had worked for 15 years as a professional city councilor for the CSU and the city’s economics officer. He is originally a trained banker. Fleck said on Wednesday that he did not want to leave the trade fair “in the midst of the turbulence of the pandemic, war and energy crisis”, but deliberately waited until the company, which had around 1,000 employees, was up and running again. Nuremberg’s Lord Mayor Marcus König (CSU) said that “the keen sense for trade fair trends, for new topics and for new markets abroad” was “essentially linked to the management of Roland Fleck”. Finance Minister Albert Füracker (CSU) praised Fleck’s “economic and strategic vision”.
Unlike Fleck, a career changer, Ottmann is a trade fair man by nature. Born in 1966, the business graduate from Hesse began his Nuremberg career in 1994 as a press officer. In 2005 he became a member of the management board and in 2011, together with Fleck, the successor to Bernd Diederichs, who was the boss of the trade fair for many years. In addition to his job in Nuremberg, Ottmann is the first deputy chairman of the German trade fair industry association Auma.