Deutsche Lufthansa AG appointed Simone Menne, who has worked forthe carrier since 1989, to succeed Stephan Gemkow, making her thesole female chief financial officer in the DAX index of the 30largest German companies.

Menne, currently CFO at the company's former BMI unit, willassume her new role on July 1, Cologne, Germany-based Lufthansasaid yesterday in an e-mailed statement. She will also beLufthansa's first female board member, spokesman Christoph Meiersaid yesterday by telephone.

“In Simone Menne we are appointing to the board an experiencedLufthansa manager who knows the company and the industry verywell,” said Chairman Juergen Weber.

German Labor Minister Ursula von Leyen has repeatedly called forgender quotas in DAX companies' management and supervisory boards.She told Bild-Zeitung in April that they remain behind medium-sizedcompanies, who have increased the share of women in leadingpositions to 30 percent.

In succeeding Gemkow, who will leave June 30 to become chiefexecutive officer at Franz Haniel & Cie GmbH, 51-year-old Mennewill help supervise a profit improvement plan that aims to save 1.5billion euros by 2014 and will lead to the loss of 3,500administrative jobs worldwide.

The job cuts, 2,500 of them in Germany, will help deliver onethird of the savings Lufthansa is seeking through 2014. A globalpurchasing project will also shave 200 million euros from expensesthis year, and “traffic optimization” should recoup at least 10million euros.

Europe's second-biggest airline, which has about 117,000employees, 16,800 of them in clerical posts, said last week itsfirst-quarter operating loss widened to 381 million euros. That wasbigger than analysts had estimated, as economies slowed and fuelcosts weighed on earnings.

Prior to assuming the role in June 2010 of CFO at BMI, whichLufthansa sold to International Consolidated Airlines Group SA inApril, Menne led finance and accounting at the Lufthansa Techniksupport unit. She was also a project manager reorganizing revenuemanagement at the passenger airline in the late 1990s.

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