DÜSSELDORF/ESSEN (dpa-AFX) - Eon energy manager Michael Lewis will take up his new post as CEO of nationalized energy group Uniper on July 1. This was announced by Uniper in Düsseldorf on Friday. This ends a then four-month vacancy in this post. The previous CEO Klaus-Dieter Maubach had left the company at the end of February.

Energy manager Lewis (55) has been CEO of Eon UK since 2017. The change to Uniper had already been announced by the companies involved on March 1.

Uniper is Germany's largest gas wholesaler and is considered systemically important. Among other things, it supplies around 500 municipal utilities and 400 large industrial customers. Until the summer of last year, a large proportion of Russian gas imports to Germany went through Uniper. After the cessation of supplies, Uniper floundered due to the high cost of replacement procurement and had to be rescued by the federal government.

Uniper announced further changes to its board. Accordingly, head of trading Niek den Hollander will leave the company at his own request at the end of July. He will be succeeded as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) by Carsten Poppinga on October 1. The mathematician is currently head of European and US energy trading at the energy trading company Statkraft Markets in Düsseldorf, a subsidiary of the Norwegian Statkraft.

Uniper Supervisory Board Chairman Tom Blades thanked Hollander for his work, especially in the crisis year of 2022. "The rapid procurement of replacement gas after the Russian supply freeze last summer is due in no small part to him," Blades was quoted as saying./tob/DP/stw