BERLIN, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Bill McDermott, chief executive officer (CEO) of enterprise software giant SAP, is stepping down after nearly 10 years at the helm, the German company announced on Friday.
SAP Executive Board members Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein have been appointed as co-CEOs with "immediate effect." McDermott is set to stay on as an advisor until the end of the current year to "ensure a smooth transition," SAP stated.
"Bill made invaluable contributions to this company and he was a main driver of SAP's transition to the cloud, which will fuel our growth for many years to come," said Hasso Plattner, chairman of SAP's Supervisory Board.
McDermott joined SAP back in 2002 as head of the company's North American branch. Having then headed SAP's customer operations division, he became a member of the software company's Executive Board in 2008.
In 2010, McDermott was appointed CEO of SAP jointly with Jim Hagemann Snabe, who switched over to SAP's Supervisory Board in 2014 and later became head of the Supervisory Board of German technology giant Siemens.
"When you look at where we were and where we are, I simply could not be prouder of what this company has achieved over the past decade," said McDermott.
Since McDermott's appointment as CEO in 2010, SAP's share prices have quadrupled from around 30 euros (33.2 U.S. dollars) to an all-time high of more than 120 euros in mid-2019.
With a market capitalization of more than 135 billion euros, SAP is currently the most valuable German company.
Alongside the announcement of McDermott's resignation, SAP published its preliminary business figures for the third quarter of 2019 on Friday.
SAP's operational profits have increased by 36 percent year-on-year to 1.68 billion euros, while total revenues were up 13 percent to 6.79 billion euros between July and September.
"We have delivered a very strong result on the bottom line based on further acceleration of our operational excellence initiative and restructuring benefits in the third quarter," noted Chief Financial Office (CFO) Luka Mucic.
Investors on the stock market reacted very positively to the publication of SAP's preliminary third quarter results. Share prices increased by more than 7.5 percent and were the clear winner in Germany's benchmark stock index DAX on Friday.
