Peter Löscher, president of Global Human Health at pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. Inc., will be the new president and CEO of Siemens AG, Siemens announced yesterday. Löscher will take office July 1, replacing Klaus Kleinfeld, who will step down effective June 30. In addition, Heinrich Hiesinger, group president of Siemens Building Technologies (SBT), was appointed to the managing board of Siemens AG and as a member of its corporate executive committee, effective June 1. Löscher, who studied economics in Vienna, Hong Kong and at Harvard Business School, began his career in 1985 at the German management consultanting firm Kienbaum & Partner. From 1988 to 2002, he held a variety of posts at Hoechst AG and, following its merger with Rhone Poulenc Rohrer, at Aventis -- working in Germany, the US, Spain, the UK and Japan. He was subsequently appointed chairman, president and CEO of Aventis Pharma Ltd. In 2002, he moved to the UK life sciences company Amersham; following its acquisition by General Electric, he joined the GE Corporate Executive Council. Löscher has been a member of the executive committee at Merck and president of Merck’s global human health division since 2006. Hiesinger is also slated to succeed Jürgen Radomski as head of Siemens’ corporate personnel department and as labor director, by Dec. 31 at the latest, Siemens said.