Speakers at our Annual Conference

Stefan Carsten is a pioneer in ensuring sensible mobility solutions for citizens in urban and rural areas. He was a project manager in the future and environment research department at Daimler AG, where he designed new mobility services such as car2go and moovel. He has been a freelance consultant, author and speaker since 2014 and is currently on the advisory board of the Federal Ministry of Transport for ‘Strategic Guidelines for Public Transport in Germany’ and the municipal housing company Howoge in Berlin, among others. His cooperation partners can be found in every corner of the mobility world: the bicycle industry, public transport and sharing companies as well as the automotive industry. As a political consultant, he supports ministries, districts, cities and municipalities. Stefan is married, has two children and lives and works in Berlin.

Oliver Danninger has been a partner at accilium since 2021. His main areas of expertise are sustainability/CSRD and integrated mobility as well as the methodological focus on strategy, change, transformation and operationalisation of new processes and methods. From 2018 to 2021, Oliver was responsible for the area of decarbonisation and digitalised mobility (Department of Spatial Planning and Overall Transport Affairs) at the Office of the Provincial Government of Lower Austria; from 2012 to 2018 at ecoplus, the Lower Austrian Business Agency, as Head of the Electromobility Initiative of the Province of Lower Austria and as Electromobility Officer of the Province of Lower Austria; from 2006 to 2012 at Audi AG in Ingolstadt.

Every year, Markus Exler invites people to a cross-border dialogue with interesting people. When he is not lecturing at the institute in Kufstein or abroad as a visiting professor, he is a management consultant, holds advisory board positions in medium-sized companies and does not view the restructuring of companies as a flaw or a consequence of a crisis, but rather as part of normal corporate development. Markus is often booked as a speaker at conferences and corporate events. He believes that thinking about restructuring should be a constant task for every manager. He is at home in Nuremberg and Kufstein.

Since 2001, Elske Fehl-Weileder has been working as a lawyer specialising in insolvency and restructuring law, since 2005 at the supra-regional insolvency and restructuring law firm Schultze & Braun in Nuremberg and Munich. She has been appointed insolvency administrator by several Bavarian courts for 19 years. Elske is the author of the commentary on the InsO by Braun and regularly publishes on reorganisation-related topics in various specialist journals. She is also the spokeswoman for the administrators' chapter of Distressed Ladies - Women in Restructuring e.V. She studied law and obtained her doctorate at the University of Passau and completed her legal clerkship at the Higher Regional Court of Nuremberg.

Petra Heidenfelder has been a partner since 2008 and has more than 25 years of experience in the insolvency business. She has been involved in major proceedings such as Philipp Holzmann AG, Walter Bau AG, Schlecker and Alpine Deutschland GmbH. She also knows banking life ‘from the inside’ from her work as a branch manager and reorganisation consultant at several large German banks. She has also been advising debtors and creditors for several years. She can draw on a broad network in the reorganisation sector through various association memberships. Petra loves the practical relevance and is always solution-orientated for her clients. Due to her work as a mediator and yoga teacher, she is always able to keep calm even in conflict-laden and stressful situations.

Alexander Kujumdshiev has 15 years of experience in the automotive industry, specialising in automotive, commercial vehicles and related sectors such as mechanical engineering and energy. Prior to his role as Director Automotive at KEYPLAYER, the industrial engineering graduate managed strategy and product areas at a leading global automotive supplier. As Managing Principal of a management & technology consultancy, he supported clients in the areas of product development, efficiency improvement and organisational development in the automotive industry. Alexander has also worked as a management consultant at corporate and SME level, mainly in North America and Europe. He is also passionate about collecting classic cars.

As Group CFO, Brigitte Kurz assumes responsibility for Trench Group GmbH, a company whose high-voltage components make a significant contribution to the expansion of global power grids and thus to the energy transition.Prior to this, she held CFO positions at IGEFA SE, a European wholesale supplier based in northern Germany; Wolford AG, the well-known Austrian hosiery manufacturer, where she was also responsible for the cost reorganisation of the company; DMG MORI Group in Switzerland and VP Controlling at Carcoustics, a Tier I/II automotive supplier based in Germany.Brigitte holds a Master's degree in International Business Management and has a successful track record as CFO in various positions.She brings extensive management expertise with more than 20 years of experience as a senior executive.Born in Tyrol, she commutes between Berlin and Dornbirn and enjoys experiencing nature and the mountains in Vorarlberg as a contrast to the big city.

Holger Leichtle is a representative of transparent, consensus- and solution-orientated insolvency administration as an insolvency administrator, trustee and when assuming board/management functions in self-administration proceedings.Co-operation with the stakeholders and an economic solution are the maxims of the proceedings.The preservation of expertise and jobs take centre stage.He has a particular industry focus on the automotive, mechanical engineering, service and retail sectors, property developers, property developers and the main and ancillary construction trades.He is also appointed nationwide, particularly in larger automotive cases. Mr Leichtle has a proven track record of specialist publications and commentaries and has been recognised as one of the leading German experts in insolvency law.

Andrea Metz has more than 20 years of experience as an expert in corporate law and M&A as well as restructuring and insolvency. She began her career in 1996 as a legal advisor to the Hamburg-based musical group Stella AG. Following a period abroad in New York at the International Tax Desk of Ernst & Young, she worked for many years as a lawyer/partner at Luther and most recently at Buse. Andrea holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the London School of Economics. She regularly speaks at specialist events and takes part in panels, often as a moderator. She lives in Frankfurt, enjoys going to the theatre and travelling to faraway countries on holiday.

Martin Mucha is well known in the community for resolving complex insolvency proceedings, particularly in an international environment. He and his teams regularly act as insolvency administrators, trustees and self-administrators throughout Germany, specialising in the manufacturing and retail sectors. In the automotive world, Martin Mucha enjoys the trust of OEMs and their stakeholders. A graduate in business law (Universities of Bayreuth, Fribourg (CH) and Freiburg im Breisgau), Martin Mucha is widely recognised for his ability to understand business issues. He has received numerous awards for his work in recent years. Among other things, he is a member of the Gravenbrucher Kreis. Martin Mucha and his family live in Stuttgart.

He was with us once before in 2017. Back then, Alex and two other partners founded the accilium Group, headquartered in Vienna, which focuses on the transformation and digitalisation of corporate processes as well as the organisational and cultural alignment of corporate structures to software-centric value creation, particularly in the automotive industry. The company now employs 200 people at 7 locations in 3 countries. He can look back on many years of industry expertise in the automotive and aviation industries. One of his absolute professional passions is the attention to organisational and cultural change in corporate and leadership cultures.

Frank Schäffler and his team advise companies in crisis with a focus on corporate groups and listed stock corporations. Together with the companies‘ respective business advisors, he designs and implements reorganisation strategies with the aim of making the best possible use of the reorganisers’ legal toolbox. Companies and stakeholders value his open communication and business understanding. Frank, who studied in Constance and Manchester, is a recognised StaRUG specialist with an extensive track record of successfully completed proceedings. He was one of the first to establish the restructuring procedure in consultancy practice. The father of four has published numerous specialist articles and is frequently recommended in the industry media.

He joined the Berylls team for turnarounds and restructurings at the beginning of 2021. Philipp Stütz has over nineteen years of experience in the automotive industry. Of this, he spent seven years in finance and controlling at an international automotive supplier with assignments in Spain, the USA and Mexico and over twelve years in top management consulting. His consulting focus lies in the areas of operations excellence, performance improvement and process optimisation. Philipp is a technically orientated business graduate and studied at the Universities of Stuttgart and Strasbourg.

After his time as a lawyer at CMS Stuttgart, Ulrich Thiem joined Porsche AG in 2011 as Head of the Legal Department and has been Head of M&A in Stuttgart and Head of the VC Department with operational management of Porsche Ventures in Luxembourg, the finance department of Porsche AG, since 2019. Ulrich, who holds a doctorate in law, has been a qualified solicitor (England & Wales) since 2009 and has worked in Moscow and London. Ulrich says he is a workaholic with a tendency to be a family man. He spends his weekends with his family, especially playing American football with his son.

Michaela Tschiderer has been working as a lawyer in insolvency law since 2012. After studying law and business law at the University of Innsbruck and spending time abroad in Brussels, she initially worked as an associate at the law firm Freimüller-Obereder-Pilz and has been an independent lawyer since 2017; currently as part of the boutique law firm ‘LAW WIEN’ in cooperation with Freimüller Rechtsanwalts GmbH. She specialises in insolvency law, in particular corporate restructuring. Since her registration as an independent lawyer in 2017, she has also been regularly appointed as an insolvency administrator at the Commercial Court of Vienna.

Daniel, a company founder who is now applying his experience from Silicon Valley in Germany. He founded wikimove with a clear objective: to sustainably change and rethink mobility based on the needs of citizens, cities and nature. His time in Silicon Valley had a significant impact on him and inspired him to develop innovative solutions for urban mobility problems. With a background in architecture and renewable energy as well as strategic experience at Mercedes-Benz and Deutsche Bahn, he has made wikimove a pioneer in sustainable mobility design.

Veronika Zelger is a sparring partner and transition partner for medium-sized companies. She uses her expertise and years of experience to support companies in challenging situations.