Stefan Roever

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Stefan Röver is and IT executive, currently in a CEO role at Navio. Before Navio, Röver was the CEO of Brokat, a german software company. Analysts and former employees of Brokat criticized Röver's lack of focus, which (they allege) ultimately led to the bankruptcy of Brokat. Brokat started out as a supplier of encryption software for the financial industry and then changed its focus to Mobile Commerce, without ever generating a profit. The critics think Röver should have put more emphasis on developing the core business of Brokat, which was the delivery of financial transaction solutions. Also, Brokat attempted to become a middleware software vendor (with the Twister platform), but failed to gain any traction in the all-important US market. A better strategy would have been to embrace an open-source application server like Jboss instead, thereby increasing the potential customer base and nurturing the core business. Röver is also criticised for the very aggressive financial strategy of Brokat: Before making any profits, the company went public (at the Neuer Markt in Germany and later in New York). Then, Brokat bought several other software companies, which were also not profitable, for huge sums (more than 1 billion US$). Only a few months before bankcrupty, Brokat announced to multiply revenues and quickly become profitable. Stefan Röver led Brokat from inception to bankruptcy.