Munich, Germany – 3 July 2017 –
On 1 July 2017, Andrea Agrusow assumed the positions of Chief Operating Officer (COO) of AccorInvest Central Europe and Chair of the Executive Board of AccorInvest Germany. In order to ensure long-term growth, AccorHotels has created two strategic business units around the world, both of them standalone companies. In Germany, AccorInvest Germany plays the role of hotel owner, hotel investor and tenant/leaseholder, while AccorHotels Deutschland GmbH acts as hotel manager and franchisor. Giving the companies separate legal structures marks an important milestone in AccorHotels’ “Booster” project before the majority of shares in the global business AccorInvest are made available to investors.
New management team at AccorInvest Andrea Agrusow is ideally equipped to deal with the new challenges and is to be responsible for operations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The business graduate has over 20 years of extensive international experience in the real estate sector. She joined CBRE Global Investors Germany in 2010, becoming the Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director in 2012, with responsibilities including financial management, controlling, compliance, risk management, human resources and IT. Andrea Agrusow started out at KPMG before moving to Deka Immobilien Investment GmbH, latterly as a fund manager responsible for a closed-end property investment fund. She will be assisted by a management team comprising Directors Tarik B’shary (Legal, Compliance, Technology, Asset Management) and Michael Verhoff (Human Resources) as well as authorised officer Ralf Bombita (Finance, Tax).
The Chair of the Executive Board will report to John Ozinga, CEO of AccorInvest Global, and will work closely with its COO Laurent Picheral.
“Andrea’s exceptionally profound expertise will help to shape the key real estate division in Central Europe,” said Laurent Picheral. “Her empathetic nature and emotional intelligence as well as her many years of experience in human resources are also essential requirements if AccorInvest is to fulfil its social responsibility as an employer of several thousand staff. I’m thrilled that we were able to recruit her for this exciting challenge.”
AccorInvest is aiming to establish itself as a leading hotel investor in the economy and midscale segment in Europe and to accelerate the renovation work at its hotels by making optimum use of the funds it has available for investments. It will support AccorHotels’ growth through the targeted extension of its hotel portfolio. AccorInvest is also already providing attractive jobs to over 5,000 employees in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. By continuously and selectively adapting its hotel portfolio and because of its long-term management contracts with AccorHotels, AccorInvest will play an important role as a strong engine of the economy and a reliable employer in the sector, which operates in a forward-thinking and sustainable way on the basis of shared values.
Andrea Agrusow will be working in close cooperation with the Central Europe COOs and Directors of AccorHotels Deutschland GmbH Daniela Schade, Volkmar Pfaff and Fabien Valentin and is looking forward to forging a partnership based on trust.