Two new BASF board members

As a result of these changes, the board of executive directors has decided to reassign responsibilities. Following the transformation of German BASF into a European company, Societas Europaea (BASF SE), these changes will be made stepwise until the annual meeting in April, 2008. Effective August 1, 2007, the board has appointed chief financial officer Dr Kurt Bock as chairman and CEO of BASF Corporation in the US in addition to his current duties. The new appointments were necessary due to the retirement of three current members: Eggert Voscherau, who has been a member of the board since 1996 and is vice chairman as well as BASF's industrial relations director, will retire following the annual meeting in 2008. Peter Oakley, a member of the board since 1998 and responsible for agricultural products & nutrition, speciality chemicals research and BASF plant science, will leave the company at his own request to pursue a new business opportunity following the transformation of BASF Aktiengesellschaft into BASF SE. Klaus Peter Löbbe, who has been a member of the board since 2002 and is responsible for North America and the catalysts division as well as being chairman and CEO of BASF Corporation, Florham Park, New Jersey, will retire from BASF for health reasons, effective July 31, 2007. Chief financial officer Kurt Bock will assume Löbbe's US-based responsibilities in addition to his current duties. Harald Schwager will succeed Voscherau. He is a chemist and has been verbund site manager Ludwigshafen since February 2006. Schwager started work at BASF in 1988 in polypropylene catalyst research. After positions in technical service for polypropylene, and marketing and sales for polyvinyl chloride (pvc), he became head of the polyvinyl chloride business unit headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, as well as managing director of the European companies of Solvin SA in Brussels. In 2003, he was appointed head of BASF's inorganics division. Wolfgang Büchele is also a chemist and has been responsible for the fine chemicals division since October 2005. He joined BASF as a researcher in 1987 and subsequently headed a research group for industrial catalysts. After working as head of regional marketing for catalysts in Asia and head of global marketing for cosmetics ingredients, he was made responsible for business management fine chemicals Europe. Büchele subsequently headed the Eastern Europe, Africa, West Asia regional division before being appointed head of the performance chemicals division in 2003. He is a member of the verbund site executives team in Ludwigshafen. With the new appointments, the number of members of the board of executive directors will be reduced from nine to eight.