Chairman and CEO of the SMS group awarded Russian honour
May 7, 2013
The Russian government has presented Heinrich Weiss, Chairman of the SMS group, with an “Award of Honour” in recognition of decades of outstanding service to Russian-German relations.
The Russian Ambassador Wladimir M Grinin presents
the “Award of Honor“ to Dr. Heinrich Weiss,
Chairman and CEO of the SMS group
The prestigious award, rarely given to foreigners, was presented by the Russian Ambassador Wladimir M Grinin, at a ceremony in Berlin on May 2.
The SMS group built up by Weiss has erected numerous metallurgical plants and rolling mills for the Russian steel and aluminium industry over the last 45 years. As early as 1969, when Weiss served as Managing Director of an SMS subsidiary, he negotiated his first major contract for a mining plant in Moscow.
This was followed by large projects with the Soviet steel and aluminium industry in the 1970s and 1980s. In the last decade alone, the SMS group has attracted orders from Russia totalling more than USD $3.5 billion.
For many years Weiss has been dedicated to fostering political relations, noteably between 1982 and 2012 as a member of the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, and most recently, from 2008 to 2012, as President of the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce.
