Dominik von Achten

Long tenures in a company can make it easy to get caught up in internal dynamics. Staying curious by asking questions, balancing deep company knowledge with an external perspective, and constantly challenging yourself is what keeps you on your toes.

— Dominik von Achten

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Overview

Dr. Dominik von Achten
Born	(1965-12-26) 26 December 1965 Munich, Germany
Citizenship	German
Education	Law and economics
Alma mater	University of Freiburg; University of Munich
Occupation	Business executive
Employer	Heidelberg Materials AG
Known for	Chief executive of Heidelberg Materials and leadership in cement decarbonisation
Title	Chairman of the Managing Board and CEO
Term	1 February 2020 – present
Predecessor	Bernd Scheifele
Board member of	Global Cement and Concrete Association (president)
Spouse	Married
Children	4

🧱 Dominik von Achten (born 26 December 1965) is a German business executive who has served as chairman of the managing board and chief executive officer (CEO) of Heidelberg Materials, one of the world’s largest producers of cement and building materials, since February 2020. A former partner at the Boston Consulting Group, he joined HeidelbergCement’s managing board in 2007 and subsequently served as regional head for North America and Western and Southern Europe, deputy chairman of the managing board and chief digital officer before succeeding Bernd Scheifele as chief executive.

🌍 Strategic profile. His tenure has been marked by an emphasis on decarbonising cement and concrete production, portfolio optimisation and digital transformation, including the “Beyond 2020” strategy, substantial investments in carbon-capture technology and the 2022 rebranding of HeidelbergCement as Heidelberg Materials to signal a broader, sustainability-oriented building-materials portfolio. In 2024 the company’s supervisory board extended his mandate as CEO through 2028, citing his role in steering the group through challenging conditions while advancing decarbonisation and digitalisation.

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Early life and education

🎓 Background and studies. Von Achten was born on 26 December 1965 in Munich, Bavaria, and grew up in southern Germany, later studying both law and economics at the universities of Freiburg and Munich, giving him a dual grounding in legal reasoning and economic analysis.

⚖️ Legal training. He completed Germany’s two-stage legal qualification, including work as a legal clerk at the Munich Higher Regional Court and the Traunstein District Court, and earned a doctorate in economic policy in 1996, providing an academic foundation that combined jurisprudence with macro-economic policy expertise.

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Career

💼 Consulting career. After qualifying as a lawyer, von Achten joined the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in 1996, moving from the courtroom into management consulting and over an eleven-year period rose to become a partner and managing director, working with international clients and spending time in BCG’s New York and Helsinki offices.

🧩 First contact with HeidelbergCement. Among his key assignments at BCG was a performance-improvement initiative known as the “WIN” project for HeidelbergCement, then a major German building-materials group, where he helped design and implement measures to raise efficiency; the project’s success impressed the company’s leadership and ultimately led to his recruitment onto its managing board in October 2007.

🌎 Regional leadership and acquisitions. On joining HeidelbergCement’s managing board, von Achten was initially responsible for the United Kingdom business and for integrating the British building-materials company Hanson plc, acquired that year in a multibillion-pound deal, and he later oversaw the North America group region from 2009 to 2016, steering the business through the global financial crisis and its aftermath while embedding synergies from the Hanson acquisition.

🏗️ Deputy CEO and European portfolio. In February 2015 he was appointed deputy chairman of the managing board, effectively becoming second-in-command, and in 2016 he took charge of the Western and Southern Europe group region, where he played a central role in integrating the Italian cement producer Italcementi and in coordinating the group’s global Competence Center Materials for cement and concrete.

💻 Digital transformation. From 2017 von Achten additionally served as chief digital officer, championing initiatives such as the HConnect customer portal and data-driven optimisation programmes that sought to modernise HeidelbergCement’s operations, logistics and customer interfaces across its global network of plants and markets.

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CEO of Heidelberg Materials

🎯 Appointment as chief executive. On 1 February 2020 von Achten succeeded Bernd Scheifele as chairman of the managing board and CEO of HeidelbergCement, taking over leadership of the DAX-listed group after more than a decade in senior roles; the supervisory board presented him as a competent and internationally experienced internal candidate well placed to lead the company into a successful and sustainable future.

🦠 COVID-19 crisis management. Almost immediately after taking office he faced the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which sharply curtailed construction activity worldwide, and responded by launching the “COPE” action plan in early 2020 to preserve roughly €1 billion in cash through strict cost controls, reductions in discretionary expenditure, voluntary salary cuts by top management, curtailed capital investment and tight working-capital management, while stating that employee health and safety remained a priority.

📊 “Beyond 2020” strategy and portfolio reshaping. In September 2020 von Achten presented the “Beyond 2020” strategy, committing the group to accelerate CO₂-reduction targets, improve profitability by around 300 basis points to an EBITDA margin of roughly 22 per cent by 2025 and lift return on invested capital above 8 per cent, alongside an active programme of divesting non-core or underperforming assets and reinvesting in digitalisation and low-carbon technologies.

🧾 Asset sales and capital allocation. Under this programme HeidelbergCement pursued disposals in several markets and by the end of 2020 reported asset sales of about €1.5 billion, including a broader repositioning of its North American footprint that saw the sale of its West Region business in the United States—cement plants and aggregates operations in California and Arizona—for around US$2.3 billion, with proceeds used to reduce debt and sharpen the company’s geographic focus.

🌱 Rebranding and net-zero product initiatives. In 2022 the company adopted the corporate name Heidelberg Materials, a change promoted by von Achten to reflect a broader building-materials portfolio and a stronger sustainability profile, and set a goal of deriving 50 per cent of revenue from sustainable products by 2030 while investing in flagship carbon-capture and storage projects such as the Brevik plant in Norway and launching low-carbon product lines including EcoZero and EvoZero cements marketed as net-zero or carbon-neutral offerings.

🇺🇸 North American growth focus. Drawing on his earlier experience running Heidelberg’s North American operations, von Achten has emphasised expansion in the region—particularly in fast-growing Sunbelt markets—arguing that increased United States infrastructure and industrial spending will support long-term demand for cement and concrete and signalling an appetite for further acquisitions there while rejecting proposals to spin off or separately list the company’s North American business.

💹 Financial performance under his tenure. By the mid-2020s Heidelberg Materials had recovered from the pandemic downturn and reported record operating results, and analyst assessments noted that between 2020 and 2023 total shareholder return approached 300 per cent, with the share price more than doubling and leverage reduced to a conservative range of around 1.5–2 times earnings, making the company one of Europe’s stronger-performing large-cap materials stocks over that period.

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Financial compensation and wealth

💶 Remuneration structure. As CEO of a large DAX-listed industrial group, von Achten receives a compensation package comprising a fixed base salary, annual bonuses tied to short-term targets and longer-term share-based incentives; disclosures for the 2024 financial year indicated total pay of about €8.7 million, of which roughly €1.6 million was fixed salary and more than 80 per cent was variable and contingent on company performance and sustainability metrics.

🏦 Comparisons and investor reactions. External analyses have noted that his pay level is almost double the median for German basic-materials companies of comparable size—around 94 per cent above the sector average—but that strong shareholder returns have so far led investors to endorse remuneration reports at annual general meetings, while keeping a watching brief on future increases.

💼 Personal wealth and shareholdings. Public filings suggest that, unlike founder-owners, von Achten does not hold a large equity stake in Heidelberg Materials, instead building his personal wealth primarily through decades of executive remuneration, required share ownership and long-term incentive plans, with his direct shareholding constituting only a small fraction of the company’s outstanding equity.

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Industry roles and public profile

🤝 Global industry leadership. In June 2025 von Achten was elected president of the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA), an industry body representing many of the world’s largest cement producers, giving him a prominent role in coordinating sector-wide efforts to achieve net-zero concrete by 2050 and to share technology and policy approaches across companies and regions.

📣 Advocacy on climate and policy. He has become one of the more vocal European industrial CEOs on climate policy, arguing that large-scale decarbonisation of heavy industry requires supportive frameworks such as carbon pricing, clearer long-term regulation and public co-funding for breakthrough technologies, and has urged governments not to “drive with the handbrake on” in implementing climate legislation that would enable companies like Heidelberg Materials to invest more aggressively in low-carbon solutions.

💬 Leadership philosophy. In a widely shared LinkedIn post reflecting on his experience as an “insider” CEO, von Achten cited early mentorship advice to approach the top job as if coming from outside the company—remaining curious, questioning assumptions and balancing deep institutional knowledge with external perspectives—and has said he seeks to embody that approach by engaging directly with employees at all levels.

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Personal life

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family. Von Achten is married with four children and lives in Germany; company communications describe him as a family-oriented executive, and limited detail about his spouse and children is made public in order to preserve their privacy.

🌍 Personality and interests. Colleagues and profiles have depicted him as down-to-earth and approachable, with an international outlook shaped by periods living in the United States and Finland during his consulting career, fluency in English and an interest in mentoring younger colleagues, sustainability topics and technological innovation in areas such as carbon capture and digital platforms.

🧑‍🏫 Engagement and philanthropy. Within Heidelberg Materials he has supported training schemes and open “ask me anything” sessions with trainees and junior staff, and has participated in corporate-backed social projects, including education and community initiatives in emerging markets, reflecting an emphasis on youth development and corporate social responsibility in his public appearances.

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Controversies and challenges

♻️ Environmental footprint. As head of one of the world’s largest cement producers, von Achten presides over a business that is inherently carbon-intensive, and Heidelberg Materials has frequently been listed among the biggest greenhouse-gas emitters on the German stock exchange, making the company a focal point for public debate about the speed and credibility of industry decarbonisation plans.

🚨 Climate activism. During his tenure groups such as Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace have staged protests at Heidelberg Materials facilities and at the company’s headquarters—including demonstrations in which activists chained or cemented themselves near company sites and temporarily blocked operations—to call for faster emissions reductions and for an end to expansion of clinker capacity.

⚖️ Operations in the West Bank. Heidelberg Materials’ subsidiary Hanson Israel has operated quarries and concrete plants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, leading to criticism from human-rights organisations and prompting actions such as a 2009 petition by Israeli NGO Yesh Din and subsequent divestments by Scandinavian institutional investors including Norway’s KLP, Denmark’s PFA Pension and Sampension, which cited concerns about the use of Palestinian natural resources under occupation.

🌐 Russia and geopolitical risk. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the company faced pressure to withdraw from the Russian market; while Heidelberg Materials initially suspended new investments, it was criticised by some observers and monitoring projects for not exiting immediately, and later moved towards selling or winding down its Russian operations amid sanctions and political constraints.

📑 Governance, pay and internal change. Governance tensions under von Achten have mainly related to executive pay levels—flagged by some advisory firms as high relative to sector peers—as well as the challenges of shifting a traditionally conservative industrial culture towards digital and sustainability-focused practices; however, shareholder votes have generally supported remuneration reports and, in 2024, the supervisory board renewed his contract early and praised his role in steering the group through crises while advancing decarbonisation and digitalisation.

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Legacy and assessment

🧭 Continuity and strategic shift. Commentators have noted that von Achten inherited a company shaped by his predecessor Bernd Scheifele’s acquisition-driven expansion and cost-cutting, and that while he has maintained continuity in operational discipline and global scale, he has sought to reposition Heidelberg Materials by emphasising innovation, digital capabilities and a broader materials identity—symbolised by the 2022 rebrand from HeidelbergCement to Heidelberg Materials and the prominence of low-carbon products and recycling in corporate strategy.

🏛️ Mandate through the late 2020s. With his term extended to 2028, von Achten is expected to oversee the next phase of the group’s transformation, balancing short-term financial targets with long-term decarbonisation commitments and industrial investments; the supervisory board, chaired by Scheifele, stated that he had “set the course for the future with great commitment” and expressed confidence that he would continue to drive Heidelberg Materials’ evolution into a more sustainable and digitally enabled building-materials group.

🌐 Reputation. Within the cement and concrete industry, von Achten is widely regarded as a technically knowledgeable, data-driven and pragmatic leader who combines long experience inside a single company with a consulting background and international perspective, positioning him as a central figure in the sector’s response to climate change and infrastructure demand in the 2020s.

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