For the auditing and consulting firm BDO, it is a generational change: The auditor and tax advisor Andrea Bruckner and the lawyer Parwäz Rafiqpoor move to the top when Holger Otte retires as CEO on 30 June. This was announced by BDO on Friday.

Mark Fehr

Editor in business.

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The 70-year-old Otte is a veteran not only for BDO but for the entire auditing profession: He has worked for the company for 40 years, 13 of them as its boss. His father, Hans-Heinrich Otte, had founded an international auditing and consulting network in 1963 with the German auditing firm DWT, from which BDO eventually emerged. The abbreviation stands for the names Binder, Dijker and of course Otte. Today, the BDO network has 110,000 employees in 164 countries. The BDO company, which operates in Germany and has roots dating back to the inflationary period around 1920, employs 2500 people – auditors, tax consultants, lawyers and management consultants. They are to be led by Bruckner and Rafiqpoor from 1 July. Both have been members of the BDO board for some time.

A Dax mandate as the crowning glory

The 60-year-old auditor and tax consultant Bruckner has been a member of the BDO board since 2015. She is currently responsible for Human Resources, Quality Assurance, Digital Transformation, the Policy Department, all central administrative departments and a so-called Nearshoring Business Center in Kiev. There, Ukrainian specialists provide services for BDO, for example by dealing with IT problems or preparing tender documents and presentations. Bruckner is also committed to the profession of auditors and was the first chairman of the auditing institute IDW from 2017 to 2019. The IDW represents the interests of the auditors and sets standards for their work and quality assurance.

Rafiqpoor, a 50-year-old lawyer, has been a member of BDO's board of directors since 2014 and heads the tax, legal, management consulting and marketing practice areas for BDO. As part of the new dual leadership, he will be responsible for the commercial and operational business, while Bruckner will take care of quality assurance, technology, sustainability strategy and human resources. BDO describes the resignation of CEO Otte as the "end of an era". This is no exaggeration. He has not rested on his laurels, but has sent BDO on a growth course. His work was crowned when BDO received the contract for the audit of the annual financial statements of the software group SAP in 2021, shortly after the company's 100th anniversary.

As a result, BDO was the only audit firm that does not belong to the circle of four major auditors Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and EY to win a DAX mandate. And it should not stop there, as Otte had confirmed at BDO's annual press conference last year. At that time, BDO's turnover in Germany had exceeded the 300 million euro mark for the first time.

The BDO Executive Board will also be rejuvenated by the 45-year-old auditor Jens Freiberg, who is responsible for the important customer group of capital market-oriented companies and will also be increasingly responsible for international business in the future. Otte will continue to work for BDO after his retirement from the top and will remain an anchor shareholder. The operational decisions, however, will then be made by his successors.