Ben Lipps has been named as CEO and Chairman of the Managing Board of Fresenius Medical Care AG.

Ben Lipps is the hardest working person I've ever met. I worked for him for seven years at Fresenius USA. Day after day, his car was the first one in the parking lot in the morning and often was the last one to leave at night. He led by example.

Ben has known great successes during his career and has risen from crushing disappointments. Ben received a PhD in Chemical Engineering from MIT in 1966. He received only one "B" grade during all his years in high school, college, and graduate school. He led the research team at Dow that successfully developed the first hollow fiber dialyzer in the 60/70's. He then headed up a team that developed an ultra high-tech dialysis machine. His biggest disappointment occurred when the project was scrapped in the early 1980's.

Ben then started up a new company with many of the employees who worked with him on the dialysis machine project at Dow. However, things got worse before they got better. Further setbacks reduced the company to less than 20 employees and at one point they were selling only reuse equipment. Things looked bleak until Ben made a trip to Europe in 1984 and brought back a dialysis machine that had not been seen in the US. He arranged for the first US dialysis treatment on this Fresenius machine (2008C) in the clinic where I was working. He overcame our doubts and scepticism and made believers out of us that day, a scenario he was to repeat endlessly.

For the next five years, Ben then spent 2-4 days every week traveling across the US, promoting the Fresenius machine in hundreds of dialysis centers. There were also visitors every week to the Fresenius USA plant in the SF Bay area, and Ben personally picked up prospective clients at the airport, gave them the plant tour, took them to dinner, and then drove them to the airport. He made it his business to personally know everyone that was anyone in the dialysis world and to know what they thought and what they wanted in dialysis equipment. He then oversaw the design of a US version of the Fresenius machine (2008E Model) and it quickly became the best selling dialysis machine in the US. All the while, he also managed every detail of an ever growing company.

That is a little of the history behind this story.

Congratulations, Ben. No one has ever worked harder for this company.


[This message has been edited by Gary Peterson (edited 05-03-99).]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Leigh,