Stefan Messer delivered a memorable keynote speech to delegates on the second day of gasworld’s Asia-Pacific Industrial Gases Conference in Kuala Lumpur, reflecting on the group’s rich 125-year history and providing rare personal and career insights.
The sense of established and recent history coming together – after he stepped back as CEO in April and became Chairman of the Supervisory Board following what gasworld reported as ‘decades of endeavour’ – added to the special occasion.
Given the group’s documented highs and lows over the years, his presentation covered internal struggles alongside key commercial milestones such as the Linde-Praxair merger in 2018 (to allay antitrust concerns, the Messer-CVC consortium bought North and South American assets).
It has been an extraordinary journey for the world’s largest privately owned industrial gases specialist, which began with Adolf Messer starting a small German workshop in 1898, and has grown into an international, multi-billion-turnover group.
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