Curriculum vitae

Gerald Böse, Chairman and CEO of Koelnmesse GmbH, can look back on more than 35 years of experience in the international trade fair business.

Böse was born in Munich in 1962 and began his trade fair career as a trainee at Messe München in 1989 after studying business administration at Munich University of Applied Sciences. There, he gained extensive experience as a consultant and project manager in all areas of the exhibition business, particularly in trade fair marketing, the international trade fair sector, exhibition-related services and conferences.

In 1992, Gerald Böse began working for the IGEDO Company in Düsseldorf as an assistant to the management board. Until 2005, he was employed as managing director for this trade fair organiser in the fashion industry. He was also responsible for corporate planning as well as the international exhibitions and activities of the company’s subsidiaries in Italy, China and the UK. In addition to introducing innovative event formats, he established new trade fair themes, including Online Marketing Düsseldorf (OMD), which later developed into the industry's leading trade fair in Europe and is now organised as DMEXCO in Cologne.

In 2005, he became the Speaker of the Management Board of Karlsruher Messe- und Kongress GmbH and Neue Messe Karlsruhe.

Gerald Böse has been CEO of Koelnmesse GmbH since 1 March 2008. In 2010, he initiated a comprehensive efficiency and restructuring programme. Under his leadership, the company initially experienced steady growth after overcoming the global financial and economic crisis. However, the global coronavirus pandemic hit Koelnmesse hard with numerous trade fair cancellations. By 2023, the company began getting back on the road to success.

Gerald Böse's focus is on the internationalisation of Koelnmesse, using digital transformation to develop new business models, and the continuous further development of established trade fairs and their thematic core competencies. It is particularly important to him that the trade fair themes are integrated into the city and region of Cologne and that joint destination marketing is pursued to promote the location of the exhibition and conference centre and the city as a business hub.

By 2040, Koelnmesse will have invested around one billion euros in the exhibition centre in Cologne as part of its most extensive investment programme in history: "Koelnmesse 3.0".

In 2023, Koelnmesse, with Gerald Böse at its head, defined the cornerstones of its sustainability strategy, intending to achieve climate neutrality for the company and its own events in Scope 1 and Scope 2 by 2030.

In June 2008, Böse was elected to the Board of AUMA - Ausstellungs- und Messe-Ausschuss der Deutschen Wirtschaft e. V. (Association of the German Exhibition and Trade Fair Industry). In June 2010, the German-Swiss Chamber of Commerce appointed him to the Board of Directors. Since 2021, he has also been a member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of TÜV Rheinland Berlin Brandenburg Pfalz e. V. Gerald Böse is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry (UFI). In 2021, he was appointed member of the advisory board of the Cologne business development association, KölnBusiness Wirtschaftsförderung.

Gerald Böse is married and has two sons.

As of April 2025