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Stephan Ernst Schmidheiny (born 29 October 1947) is a Swiss businessman, industrialist and philanthropist. He is a prominent member of the Schmidheiny family. In 2023, his net worth was estimated by Handelszeitung to be $3.75 billion. He is also well known for being convicted over his role in the Italian asbestos scandal. Early life and education Stephan Ernst Schmidheiny was born 29 October 1947 in Balgach, Switzerland to Max Schmidheiny and Adda Schmidheiny (née Scherrer; d. 1997). He is a fourth generation member of one of the key industrial families in Switzerland. Schmidheiny completed his Law studies with a PhD at the University of Zurich in 1972. Career Eternit / Exit from Asbestos, Reflection and Legal Disputes In 1972, Stephan Schmidheiny started his business career at Eternit. In 1976, at the age of 29, he was named CEO of the Swiss Eternit Group. According to his brother Thomas Schmidheiny, their father Max Schmidheiny decided to divide his industrial empire into two halves: asbestos for Stephan, cement for Thomas. As a result of this split of activities, Stephan Schmidheiny inherited Eternit. According to his official biography, he ended the company's use of asbestos in 1986. Five years before in 1981, Schmidheiny, then chairman, announced Eternit's intention to dispense entirely with its involvement in asbestos production and distribution, far ahead of the 2005 European-wide asbestos ban. Subsequently, Eternit worked to develop and fund research to develop new fiber blends to replace asbestos. In 1984, a majority of Eternit products were manufactured asbestos free. Since 2009, due to his involvement in his family's industrial dynasty and despite his efforts to exit from asbestos, Schmidheiny has been involved in trials in Italy, one for environmental disaster and another for voluntary manslaughter, both connected to the use of asbestos in the factories of Eternit. In the first trial, Schmidheiny was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment on February 13, 2012. On June 3, 2013, the judgment given in February was confirmed and increased to 18 years imprisonment for environmental damage by the Turin Appeals Court, In November 2014, it was ruled that the statute of limitations had passed. In 2014, Schmidheiny was acquitted of the charges for alleged negligent behavior in Italy. In 2015, a second trial called "Eternit Bis" began, Stephan Schmidheiny defended against the accusation of voluntary manslaughter. On November 29, 2016, the allegations raised in Eternit Bis were dismissed by the court in Turin and the case closed. Some legal proceedings regarding negligent homicide are still possible, e.g. in Vercelli, Reggio Emilia, Naples as well as in Turin Schmidheiny has emphasized that his involvement with the Eternit group was long before the health risks of asbestos were understood, and long before production was prohibited in Italy; this ban did not happen until 1992. He admitted in an interview in 2015 that the strain from the legal proceedings in Italy had deeply affected him. Later, however, he felt the proceedings had become absurd, especially after an Italian judge compared him to Hitler and his actions comparable with "the final solution". Beyond the aforementioned legal proceedings, Stephan Schmidheiny set up funds for victims of asbestos-related diseases in South Africa and Italy, as these countries had no successor company to Eternit, which could bear the financial consequences of asbestos exposure. Sentenced for aggravated manslaughter In May 2019, Schmidheiny was sentenced to four years in prison by a Turin court for the death of two workers. The ruling marked the latest twist in a decade-long battle between Schmidheiny, the Italian government, former Eternit workers, and residents of towns near the company's asbestos plants. Prosecutor Gianfranco Colace said the ruling was the "first step" in setting a precedent on deaths from cancer and pulmonary diseases, which can take years to develop after contact with asbestos fibers. In 2023, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison on aggravated manslaughter charges related to the deaths of 392 people in Casale Monferrato. Other engagements While Schmidheiny withdrew from asbestos production and Eternit, he invested in new industrial segments, building up a multinational conglomerate of shareholdings by adding enterprises in the areas of forestry, banking, consumer goods, power generation, as well as electronic and optical equipment. He also joined the boards of directors of leading companies such as ABB Asea Brown Boveri, Nestlé, Swatch, and UBS AG. In 1985 Schmidheiny supported Nicolas Hayek in his bid for the Swiss watch holding company Société de Microélectronique et d'Horlogerie(SMH), which resulted in the rescue of the Swiss watch industry. Later from this valuable alliance, the present day Swatch Group was formed. In 1987, as an anchor shareholder in Brown, Boveri & Cie (BBC), Schmidheiny co-organized a merger of BBC with ASEA of Sweden. This led to the creation of the newly positioned, market leader in its segment, ASEA Brown Boveri, today known as ABB Group. In 1987, he took over two-thirds of the capital of Landis + Gyr from the family shareholders, as they could provide no successor for leadership. In doing so, Schmidheiny was aware that major changes were necessary, as the company was not doing well. Schmidheiny restructured the company. In 1995, the company was taken over by the Swiss company Elektrowatt. Philanthropy Philanthropic pursuits have been important to Schmidheiny and since the 1990s, he has devoted his life to these pursuits. Schmidheiny is an advocate and leader in the field of sustainable development. He served as adviser on sustainability to the United Nations as well as to the OECD. In the 1980s he created FUNDES, an organization that supports the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in several Latin American countries. According to recent Swiss accounts, Schmidheiny began buying Chilean forest land in 1982, and he now owns over 120,000 hectares in Southern Chile, near Concepción, land which the Mapuche Indians claim has been theirs since time immemorial. The Mapuche charge that some of the land Schmidheiny bought was stolen from them during the Pinochet dictatorship, using that regime's standard techniques of intimidation, torture, and murder. In 2019 Forbes put Schmidheiny in the list of the world's most generous philanthropists outside of the US. Rio Summit 1992 In 1990 Schmidheiny was appointed chief adviser for business and industry to the secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), better known as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit of 1992. The conference took place in 1992, with 172 governments participating. As chief advisor to this conference, Schmidheiny created a forum in which leading businessmen from all parts of the world developed a business perspective on environment and development challenges. Th.... Discover the Avina St G Book popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Avina St G Book books.