Michael Frenzel
Chairman, TUI AG

Michael Frenzel was born in Leipzig on 2 March 1947. After matriculation, he studied law at Ruhr University in Bochum, and successfully completed his doctorate (Dr. jur.) whilst working at the University as a research assistant.
Frenzel joined the Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB), Düsseldorf in 1981, where he was promoted to various managerial positions: he became manager of the Industrial Holdings Department in 1983, and overall manager of WestLB's Equity Holdings Division in 1985 - including holdings in banking, leasing and real estate. In 1988, he was appointed to the Preussag AG executive board, where he was responsible for Trading and Logistics.
He was promoted to chairman of the executive board in January 1994. Under his leadership, the multi-business conglomerate Preussag was repositioned into Europe's leading tourism Group within only a few years. One of the main milestones was the acquisition of a stake in Hapag-Lloyd in 1997. This was followed by the acquisition of leading tourism companies such as TUI Deutschland, Thomson Travel/London, and Nouvelles Frontières/Paris.
On 1 July 2002, the annual general meeting passed a resolution to change the name of Preussag AG to TUI AG.
TUI today boasts around 80 tour operators throughout Europe handling 18 million customers a year. In addition, the Group has over 3700 travel agencies, 32 incoming agencies, seven airlines with more than 100 aircraft, and 290 hotels with a total capacity of around 157,000 beds.