About

Shoe retailer Deichmann has over 33,000 employees and a turnover of €4.5bn. The long established company, founded in 1913, has converted its legal status into a SE in 2010, an idea whose roots can be traced back to general counsel Martin Heynen: ‘It was his idea to convert the legal status from GmbH & Co. KG to Deichmann SE and he was the one in charge of the entire project’, say observers full of praise. Heynen is known as being a ‘confidant’ to CEO Heinrich Otto Deichmann, a status that surely partly stems from his ‘outstanding corporate and commercial capabilities’. Not surprising, when describing Heynen, it is mostly his ‘discretion and tact’ that are singled out as two prominent character traits.