Franz Heukamp appointed dean of Iese Business School

Franz Heukamp is to be the new dean of Iese Business School, succeeding Jordi Canals, who has been 15 years in the job.

Prof Heukamp, currently associate dean for MBA programmes at the Barcelona-based school, joined as a faculty member in 2002. He received his PhD from MIT in 2003.

One of the items in Prof Heukamp’s inbox when he starts his new role on September 1 will be to capitalise on the expansion of Iese’s global presence, following the opening of campuses in New York, São Paulo and Munich over the past six years.

The aim is to take advantage of cross-border teaching contracts, such as the one recently agreed with BMW to run executive education courses for the German carmaker’s staff in New York, according to Prof Heukamp.

“It is not about adding further geographies but deepening our presence in these regions,” he said.

“We are attractive to companies, not so much for what we do in their home country, but what we can offer to other parts of their businesses around the world.”

Prof Heukamp said he also wanted to build on the work he has done overseeing Iese’s MBA courses since 2012. The school has some of the most international cohorts of students on its MBA courses, with 85 per cent of the intake coming from abroad. Its executive MBA is taught in Barcelona, São Paulo and New York.

Iese had a record number of MBA applications this year, and Prof Heukamp said he was “optimistic” for the degree’s future despite concern, particularly in the US, about a flatlining in the number of people applying for an MBA.

Prof Heukamp’s appointment follows several new dean announcements in recent weeks, including Jonathan Levin at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Scott DeRue at the University of Michigan‘s Ross School of Business and Andy Lockett at Warwick Business School.

Imperial College Business School is currently seeking a replacement for Anand Anandalingam, who is returning to the US to help Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign team while teaching at the Smith School at the University of Maryland, where he was dean from 2008 to 2013.