Curriculum vitae

Oliver Frese has been the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Koelnmesse GmbH since 2020 and is responsible for the company's global trade fair and event portfolio.

Having received his degree in social science, he began his career in 1995 as assistant to the management of the medium-sized company Richard Kühn/Perfekta Dienstleistungen GmbH in Burgwedel near Hanover.

In 1997 he joined DeTe Immobilien und Service GmbH, a Deutsche Telekom AG subsidiary in Hanover, and was appointed Head of Marketing and Internal Sales in 1998.

From 2000 to 2004, Oliver Frese worked as Marketing Manager for the Baden-Württemberg energy supply company EnBW in Hanover and Stuttgart, before joining Deutsche Messe AG in Hanover in 2004. In 2013 he was appointed to the Board of Management of Deutsche Messe AG.

Frese then worked as an independent management consultant in 2019 before being appointed to the Executive Board of Koelnmesse GmbH in 2020.

As Chief Operating Officer, he holds global portfolio responsibility for over 80 events in Cologne and key markets around the world. These include numerous leading world trade fairs with over 50,000 exhibiting companies and visitors from 200 countries annually.

He also serves as head of the company's Services, Sales and Marketing and Communications departments as well as Technical Event Organisation.

From the moment he took office, Oliver Frese has been dedicated to digitalisation of the Cologne trade fair company, which received a particular boost from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of this effort, Frese drove the development of digital platforms, which resulted in digital value creation models that will be consistently expanded even after the pandemic.

With a clear vision for customer-centric event organisation, he has equipped the market-facing Sales, Services and Marketing & Communications departments with a new operating model to better align marketing and sales messages while consistently focussing all activities on customers' individual needs.

Oliver Frese has two grown children and lives with his partner in Cologne.

As of June 2023