About Volker Köllmann
Volker Köllmann, born 1971, graduated in Economics at the
University of Bonn in 1996. He spent a semester at the American University (Washington DC) and from 1996 to 1997 one year of postgraduate studies at the Institute of World Economics in Kiel, Germany. During his academic career, Volker was an active
stipendiary of the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation. Amongst others,
he published an economic paper together with Andri Kopperschmidt:
„A More Stable Stability Pact“ (EIB Cahiers Papers, Autumn 1997, Luxembourg), which was rewarded with the EIB Prize Award 1997 in the category „Academics under 30“.
From 1997 to 2000, Volker was a management trainee at ESSO AG / ExxonMobil (Hamburg). He worked in corporate planning and was part of an international SAP R/3 rollout project.
In spring 2000, he switched the industry into telecommunications and started as a management assistant for the directory enquiries company telegate AG („11 88 0 – da werden Sie geholfen“), listed at the Frankfurt stock exchange. As Head of Regulatory Affairs Volker developed the company´s strategy further and successfully opened foreign directory enquiries markets to establish a fair battlefield for so-called 118 services. He contributed in several successes from regulatory as well as court proceedings in Germany. This led to a dramatic decrease of variable prices for subscriber listings and Deutsche Telekom was ordered by German courts to pay back approx. 100 million Euros.
Starting in autumn 2005, Volker as a Managing Director and Country Manager built up telegate´s affiliate in Switzerland, the 1818 Auskunft AG in Zurich. He prepared the market entry of their directory enquiry short code 1818 until the Swiss company was acquired by an American competitor.
From December 2006 until year-end 2008, Volker was Head of Business Development Online and thus responsible for all B2C activities of the local search internet portal 11880.com. After telegate acquired Klicktel AG, the well-known local search portal www.klicktel.de was added to Volker´s responsibilities.
During these two years, 11880.com was the test winner of the two German consumer-oriented professional journals PC-Praxis (09/2007) and Computer-Bild (22/2007). Within 18 months, the internet traffic of 11880.com was quadrupled under Volker´s responsibility.
In early 2009 Volker has gone into business for himself and is working as a strategic consultant.
