Hermann von Mühlenbrock Soto is a Business Administration graduate, businessman, trade union leader and Chilean consultant, current Chairman of Chile’s Manufacturers’ Association (Sofofa).

He studied at Instituto de Humanidades Luis Campino, in the capital’s Liceo de Aplicación and in the University of Chile, where he earned his degree in business administration in 1969. At the university, he had classmates such as Raúl Dieguez and Segismundo Schulin-Zeuthen, among other future senior business executives.

He began his professional career as chief of information systems at Compañía de Aceros del Pacífico (CAP), where he worked until 1975. That same year, he became a consultant at Langton Clark and in 1979 he assumed the position of administration and finance manager of Cintac steel products.

In 1983, he left the company to become general manager of the steel mill company AZA, an affiliate of Cintac. Nine years later, after the company’s operations were purchased by the Brazilian company Gerdau, he became general manager of the newly-created company Gerdau AZA.

In mid-1996, he was elected Chairman of the Association of Metallurgical and Metal and Mechanical Industries (Asimet), and he remained in such position until 2000, when he had to face the negative effects that the financial crisis in Asia had on the country’s economy.

In 2012, after 29 years, he retired from the company. Three months and a half later he became Chairman of Sofofa, thus filling the vacancy left since the death of Andrés Concha, on March 24, 2013.