People

India: UltraTech Cement has appointed Atul Daga as Chief Financial Officer of the company in place of KC Birla with effect from 1 December 2014. The decision was made at a board of directors meeting on 18 October 2014. The term of appointment of the managing director OP Puranmalka was extended for a period of one year until 31 March 2016.

US: Holcim's Ste. Genevieve plant has appointed three employees to leadership positions. Corey Green was named area leader for Maintenance and Reliability, Rodney Forester accepted the position of operations leader and Houston Meyer was named as Raw Mill area leader.

Green, in his role as Maintenance and Reliability area leader, is responsible for operations and maintenance within the plant area. Green has 15 years of experience in equipment repairs. His previous six years were as a project manager with Roland Machinery Company, where he was responsible for the oversight of the maintenance contract with Holcim.

Forester, in his role as operations leader, will supervise shift personnel and control room operations that support optimisation of processes for efficient operations. Forester joined Holcim (US) in 2008 as a cement technician in the Maintenance and Reliability department and most recently worked in the control room on a temporary operations leader assignment. Forester holds an associate's degree in welding technology from Jefferson College.

Meyer will be responsible for operations and maintenance within the Raw Mill area. He joined the Ste. Genevieve team in 2011. His most recent role was as cement technician with the Raw Mill team. Prior to joining Holcim, Houston was employed at Alberici Constructors for six years.

US: Torsten Gessner has stepped down as CEO of ThyssenKrupp North America as of 10 October 2014. Patrick Bass, currently senior vice president Product Lifecycle Management/Research and Development at the ThyssenKrupp Elevator headquarter in Germany will become CEO of ThyssenKrupp North America as of 1 January 2015. Kevin Backus, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at ThyssenKrupp North America will be responsible for the regional headquarter on an interim basis.

Patrick Bass started his career at ThyssenKrupp with ThyssenKrupp Elevator Corp., Horn Lake, US as a Mechanical Engineer in 1999. He served in various positions in the Elevator organisation where he took over the position of Executive Vice President of Research and Development before he changed to ThyssenKrupp's Elevator headquarter in Essen, Germany and took over the position of Senior Vice President Product/Research and Development in 2012.

Torsten Gessner started his career as Chief Operating Officer at ThyssenKrupp CENE in 2005. In 2009 he became CEO of ThyssenKrupp's global Business Unit for Escalators and Passenger Boarding Bridges, headquartered in Germany. In 2012 Torsten Gessner moved to the USA to assume responsibility as CEO for the implementation of ThyssenKrupp's first regional organisation in North America headquartered in Chicago.

With a turnover of Euro8.3bn in the 2012 - 2013 financial year and 20,000 employees, North America is the biggest and most important foreign market of the Essen-based industrial and engineering group.

India: UltraTech Cement Limited has appointed Sukanya Kripalu and Renuka Ramnath as additional independent directors with effect from 11 October 2014.

India: The board of directors of Gujarat Sidhee Cement Ltd has appointed R Mohnot as CFO and company secretary effective from 1 October 2014.