Birgit Behrendt

Wiesbaden, Germany
Birgit Behrendt and Xu Ping have been appointed to succeed Silke Scheiber and Dr Martin Hintze on the KION Group supervisory board. Behrendt was most recently vice president, global programs and purchasing operations at Ford Motor Company in the US. She has served at Ford since 1978 and has detailed knowledge of procurement structures gained through various senior international positions at Ford. She holds a degree from the Administration and Business Academy in Cologne, Germany.

Xu Ping

Xu was a partner at the law firm King & Wood Mallesons, where she was head of the corporate mergers and acquisitions practice group. She has more than 20 years' international advisory experience, particularly in mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and corporate restructuring. She studied law at Stanford Law School (USA) and the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, China.

Scheiber and Hintze stepped down from the board from 31 December 2014, following the reduction in the stake held by Superlift Holding Sàrl in KION Group AG. The change means that the number of seats held by women on the KION's 16-strong supervisory board has now risen from two to three.

Pat DeSutter

Greenville, NC, United States
NACCO Materials Handling Group (NMHG) recently announced the promotion of Chuck Pascarelli to president, Americas (Forkliftaction.com News #698). NMHG's existing president of sales, Americas, David Furman, will maintain his current title while expanding his areas of responsibility to include the marketing and the leasing and remarketing functions. Pat DeSutter, director of fleet management, has been promoted to the position of vice president of fleet, service and aftermarket (Forkliftaction.com News #697). Vice president of finance Ray Ulmer will maintain his current role while also assuming overall responsibility for human resources.

Thorsten Marquardt

Hamburg, Germany
Thorsten Marquardt has taken over the management of STILL's factory branch in Dortmund. Marquardt has experience in various sales management positions. Most recently, he was with Magirus GmbH in Ulm, where he was responsible for sales in Germany and Switzerland. He considers cooperative partnership with customers to be one of his most important tasks. Marquardt, together with his sales and service team of more than 120 staff, provides service in the intralogistics area.