Wolfgang Branoner

Wolfgang Branoner (born 15 April 1956) is a Berlin politician (CDU) and businessman. (More recently he has become a business consultant.) As Berlin's high-profile senator for Economics, Business and Technology he took a notably pro-business stance. His opposition to excessive regulation was evident in his eye-catching 1999 proposal for a federal (i.e. national) law to limit the power of state ("Länder" i.e.regional) governments to impose restrictive opening hours on shops.

Life Branoner was born in the Schöneberg quarter of West Berlin. Branoner was only 19 in 1975 when he joined the centre-right CDU (party).

He studied "Verwaltungswissenschaften" (loosely, "Public Administration") in Berlin between 1973 and 1984, attending the Berlin Technical Academy for Public Administration ("Fachhochschulen für öffentliche Verwaltung", as the Berlin School of Economics and Law was known at that time) and the "Verwaltungsakademie Berlin" ("Berlin Academy for Administration"). He emerged with a degree in "Verwaltungswissenschaften" in 1978 and a second degree in "Kameralismus" (loosely, "Public Accounting and Management") in 1984. During this time, in 1978, took a job with the council for Berlin's Neukölln "Bezirk" ("administrative district"). His professional career progressed in 1980 when he joined the staff of Harry Ristock, Berlin's (SPD) Berlin Senator for Housing and Construction. He was still in the job when street protestors broke through the Berlin Wall in November 1989. During the next few month social and political changes took place which were followed, formally in October 1990. by German reunification. Berlin's inner boroughs were affected by major population shifts during the reunification process, which gave Branoner's role an unexpected importance and a heightened public profile. He remained in office till the collapse of the Diepgen administration [in the wake of the Berlin banking scandals of June 2001, at which point Branoner was one of a number of senators who resigned with the mayor. In August 2003 he moved to Microsoft Germany where, till his departure in July 2006, he held a board-level position as was "Director Public Sector". Since January 2007 he has worked as a partner with SNPC, a Berlin business consultancy, taking over as senior partner in July 2011.

Personal Wolfgang Branoner has been married twice. His first marriage, to Sabine Spröde, produced two children but ended in 2001.