Management Board at Bonprix: Kai Havekost to succeed Dr. Kai Heck
With effect from 1 March 2026, Kai Havekost, currently Vice President Corporate Finance, M&A and Audit at the Otto Group, will join the Management Board at the Bonprix Group, taking on the role of CFO from Dr. Kai Heck who had for some time been planning to retire at the end of the 2025/26 financial year (28 February 2026).
A highly experienced financial expert, Kai Havekost is set to become the new CFO of the Bonprix Group. After working in various finance functions at commercial banks in Germany and abroad for over twenty years, the business graduate joined the Otto Group in 2014 as Division Manager Corporate Finance Strategy. At the beginning of 2020, he was appointed to the position of Vice President Corporate Finance. Since 2023, Havekost has also been responsible for the divisions Group Audit & Group Risk, Data Protection and M&A, and also holds several advisory board positions within the Otto Group.
In his function as VP, a large number of alternative financing options and various supply chain finance programmes were established for the Otto Group. On top of this, he also headed a number of strategic projects, including the takeover of About You SE & Co. KG by Zalando SE in the summer of this year.
Dr. Marcus Ackermann, Otto Group Executive Board Member for Multichannel Distance Selling: “I am delighted that we have succeeded in appointing Kai Havekost as the new CFO for the Bonprix Group. Given his recognised expertise in the area of finance, Bonprix's Management Board continues to be in an outstanding position to ensure Bonprix's long-term future viability. I look forward to continuing to work with Kai Havekost, then in a new constellation from March 2026.”
Dr. Kai Heck has been CFO of the Bonprix Group since 2008, where he was responsible for Finance, Accounting & Controlling, Logistics and Customer Care Management. He holds a doctorate in economics and was also responsible for backend and infrastructure IT until the end of 2023, when the IT divisions were pooled together under CTO Matthias Wlaka from 2024.
During his time as CFO, Dr. Heck succeeded not least in massively reducing the Bonprix Group's capital commitment but also in improving the operating result through targeted portfolio adjustments. His successes include the successful establishment of a strong backend and infrastructure IT, including the introduction of SAP, the business separation of warehouse logistics as the basis for automating and digitalizing processes at the Haldensleben logistics centre and the establishment and expansion of returns operations in Lodz, Poland. He also established an international organizational design for the Bonprix Group with the corresponding harmonization of processes and successfully implemented a future-proof restructuring programme.
Dr Marcus Ackermann: “Both personally and on behalf of the Otto Group’s entire Executive Board, I would like to thank Dr. Kai Heck for his enormous commitment and his long list of professional successes. As CFO of the Bonprix Group, he exhibited courage, determination and consistency in everything he carried out, as well as a willingness to take on responsibility time and again, even when times got tough. Dr. Heck is a real team player and impressively demonstrated this not least in the past two years, during which time he ably and actively accompanied the successful restructuring of the Bonprix management team. I wish Dr. Heck all the best wherever life takes him.”
Kai Havekost will be succeeded as Vice President Corporate Finance of the Otto Group by Franziska von Scholz, who has been co-lead since the beginning of the 2025/26 financial year. In this role she is already responsible for groupwide financial strategy, for representing the Otto Group in financial matters and is the main contact for banking partners and capital market investors.
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Thomas Voigt
+49 40 6461 4010
thomas.voigt@ottogroup.com
Martin Zander
+49 40 6461 2820
martin.zander@ottogroup.com
Annette Siragusano
+49 40 6461 3982
annette.siragusano@ottogroup.com
About Otto Group
With a strong heritage as a family business and firmly rooted values, the Otto Group is looking to the future with confidence. Over the past 75 years, the company has developed from a catalog-based mail order company into an international digital retail and services group with 36,300 employees and a large number of key companies, brands and holdings in over thirty countries, primarily in Germany, the rest of Europe and North America. Its business activities extend to the Platforms, Brand Concepts, Retailers, Services and Financial Services segments. In the 2024/25 financial year (ending February 28), the Otto Group generated revenues of 15 billion euros. As the largest online retailer of European origin, it is shaping the digital retail and digital services of the future by drawing on its strength, market significance and values. Driven by a passionate and entrepreneurial performance culture, the Group is exploiting its vast market expertise and technological competence to inspire its many millions of customers with high-quality products, unique choice of goods and an array of services. The Otto Group is proof that a value-oriented approach and business success can go hand in hand. Environmental protection has been another corporate objective since 1986. It takes its ecological, social and digital responsibility seriously – and will continue to do so.