Lothar Krieger
was born in Hamburg and started his shipping career as an apprentice for a Hamburg based liner shipping agency in 1980 and passed his exam in early 1983. He stayed with the same company until 1987, during which time he also became acquainted with deep sea chartering - also by becoming trainee in Howard Houlder & Partners, London and Stehn + Co., Hamburg.
As from 1987 he worked as an owners broker in Reederei "NORD" Klaus E. Oldendorff GmbH, Hamburg, during which time he learnt a lot about shipowning, container vessels, bulkcarriers and tankers, both crude and clean.
In 1997 he became Managing Director of Ahlmann Schiffahrt GmbH + Co. KG at Rendsburg, a company well known in coastal trade including stevedoring and agency in all German ports. As from September 1998, Lothar moved to Ernst Russ GmbH + Co. KG at Hamburg and started as a broker in charge of PCTC business, mainly as service provider for the Volkswagen Group.
For almost 13 years Lothar worked in worldwide transportation of vehicles, building up a network of contacts in PCTC market. After some time Lothar assumed responsibility of all the shipbroking activities of Ernst Russ, and as from 2007 he was appointed Managing Director for Ernst Russ. When Ernst Russ took over Howard Houlder & Partners in end of 2007, Lothar became a partner in that company. At the end of 2011, Lothar left Ernst Russ and set up an own company, Ferntree Consulting GmbH, commencing business activities in 2012.
Christiane Krieger
also born in Hamburg. After school she became apprentice in Hamburg based forwarding company Wilh. Loesch & Co. and later worked for Hamburg-Südamerikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft, WITAG-Weltifurrer AG at Zürich, Reinhold Bange (GmbH & Co) and Maersk Deutschland GmbH.
Lothar and Christiane have two sons, born in 1990 and 1994 respectively, and after having successfully raised the two, Christiane commenced working again. Nowadays, Christiane works in the management of real estate, on part-time basis, and as a second job also takes care of the administrative side of Ferntree Consulting GmbH.