Wolfgang Schwaiger, head of the Leather Finishing department in the Leather Business Unit at Lanxess Deutschland GmbH, retired on March 17, 2005. He is succeeded by the 43-year-old leather technologist Michael Franken.
Michael Franken was born in Euskirchen in 1962. After training as a tanner, he worked in various tanneries in Germany, Austria, Italy and France. He then embarked on a two-year course in leather technology, which he completed in February 1988 at the School of Tanning in Reutlingen. From there he went to Henkel KGaA in Düsseldorf, where he worked in the technical marketing department up to September 1991. In October 1991 he joined the technical marketing department in the Leather Business Unit at Bayer AG, moving in November 2000 from Leverkusen to Bayer S.A. in Buenos Aires in Argentina, where he was regional technical manager until his return to Leverkusen at the beginning of 2005.
