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Speaker

Dr. Christopher Sessar

Chief Accountant Officer
SAP SE

Christopher has a fourteen year experience in various finance, accounting and external reporting functions at SAP. Leading the global revenue recognition function at SAP, Christopher kicked-off the IFRS 15 implementation project. Christopher then moved into the role as SAP's Head of External Reporting in 2014 where he was responsible for SAP's annual and quarterly reporting requirements under IFRS, German GAAP and SEC law, including SAP's Integrated Report, Form 20F, quarterly statements, etc.

In his role, Christopher was a member of SAP's Integrated Reporting Steering Committee and project council, having defined and executed on SAP's award winning integrated reporting strategy in 2016 and 2017. Simultaneously, Christopher was heading several accounting CoEs, e.g. for share-based compensation, goodwill impairment accounting and testing and litigation accounting.

In 2017 he supported SAP's Global Finance Leadership Team in defining and implementing a new global finance strategy.

In 2018 Christopher was appointed as Chief Financial Officer and Member of the Management Board of SAP Germany, one of the largest market units of SAP SE. In his new role Christopher oversaw the finance function of his organization with a strong focus on controlling, sales operations general management and commercial topics.

Christopher holds a PhD, an Executive MBA, and a Master in Business Administrations and is engaged as an instructor and visiting professor at the Mannheim University, Frankfurt University and the Mannheim Business School in various finance courses.

In April 2019 Christopher was appointed as guest lecturer/visiting professor at the Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf and is giving lectures in "Digitalization of Finance: Accounting Information Systems and Accounting Processes".

In February 2020 Christopher moved back into a global role and into the accounting profession. Christopher was appointed SAP's Chief Accounting Officer (as of Q2-2020) and Head of Corporate Financial Reporting (co-leading the function and the department until then). In this role he is a member of SAP's Global Finance Leadership Team. In this role Christopher is responsible for SAP's financial reporting under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and German, European and U.S. reporting standards, all of SAP's accounting policies and the local statutory financial reporting of all SAP legal entities.

Christopher is a member of the Administrative Board of the Deutsches Rechungslegungs Standards Committee (DRSC), AKEU and Working Group Digital Reporting.