Merck appointed Dirk Toepfer as the new Chief Information Officer (CIO) on March 1. Toepfer will report to Udit Batra, CEO Life Science and Member of the Executive Board with responsibility for the Group function Business Technology, among other things. Dirk Toepfer succeeds Jim Stewart, who now heads Merck Business Services (MBS), the function responsible for the Group's shared service centers. From there, he joined Metro Group in 2002 as Managing Director and later as the CEO of the IT service company Metro Systems, consolidating international IT systems and restructuring the organization by establishing major offshore capabilities.