The chief executive of SAP, Europe’s largest software company, is recovering after a July fall led to the loss of his eye.
Bill McDermott, 54, has been working through his medical treatment and recovery and participated in the company’s July 21 earnings call. He expects to travel to the company’s Walldorf, Germany headquarters next month for the first time since the accident, reports the Wall Street Journal. McDermott normally commutes between the company’s offices in the U.S. And Germany.
The injury occurred when McDermott fell down stairs at his brother’s home in the U.S., the Journal reports. He was holding a water glass, which struck his left eye in the fall. Doctors weren’t able to save it.
McDermott told Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper, that he is fit to fulfill his CEO duties. His current term expires in 2017.
McDermott, a native New Yorker, has been CEO of SAP since 2014. Between 2010 and 2014, he shared the role with Jim Hagemann Snabe. He first joined SAP in 2002.
Under McDermott’s oversight, SAP has worked to move to a business model based on cloud computing and its Hana in-memory database technology and has expanded its portfolio of business services, which include Concur, the travel and expensing tool; Ariba, the supply chain platform; SuccessFactors, the talent management software; and Hybris, the e-commerce tool. It also struck a high-profile deal with IBM.
In an interview with Coins2Day in January, McDermott maintained that the company was on track for its five-year plan. “The business network is the sleeper,” he said. (Read the rest of the interview here.)
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For more on SAP, watch Bill McDermott’s conversation with Coins2Day’s Geoff Colvin from late last year: