Cor Boonstra (7 January 1938 – 24 May 2025) was a Dutch businessman and chief executive, mainly known for having been the president of the Board of Directors of

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

from 1996 to 2001.

Life and career

At the age of 16, he quit his study at the

Hogere burgerschool The ''Hogere Burgerschool'' (''HBS'') (Dutch: Higher Civic School) was a secondary school type that existed between 1863 and 1974 in the Netherlands and the Dutch Empire. These schools, with a five- or sometimes six-year program, continued in 1 ...

of his hometown and started to work for

Unilever Unilever PLC () is a British multinational consumer packaged goods company headquartered in London, England. It was founded on 2 September 1929 following the merger of Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie with British soap maker Lever B ...

. In 1974 he started to work for Sara Lee, where he ultimately became the president of the board of directors. On 31 December 1993, he withdrew from Sara Lee. In the beginning of 1994, he was asked by former Philips top executive Jan Timmer to participate in the Board of Directors of Philips, to breathe new life to the brand Philips. Boonstra was responsible for the 'Let's make things better' campaign. Two years after his commencement of employment with Philips, Boonstra became the successor of Timmer as the president of the board of directors. He held this leading position until 2001. While Boonstra was in charge, the market-value of Philips increased fivefold mainly by focusing on short-term profits and selling off company units like BSO/Origin (now a part of

Atos Atos SE is a European multinational information technology (IT) service and consulting company with headquarters in Bezons suburb of Paris, France, and offices worldwide. It specialises in hi-tech transactional services, unified communicat ...

and record company PolyGram. During his leadership he moved the head office (the top 350 employees) of Philips from

Eindhoven Eindhoven ( ; ) is a city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, located in the southern Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Brabant, of which it is the largest municipality, and is also locat ...

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

, the capital of the country. Since most of the regular staff remained in Eindhoven, the birthplace of the company, this move was not popular among Philips employees. In 2000, Boonstra was chosen 'top executive of the year'. Boonstra divorced two times and had two children (Cor Boonstra and Roelof Boonstra) of his first wife. In 1998, Boonstra and his first wife barely survived a hijacking. At that time, Boonstra already was having an affair with Sylvia Tóth. A few years later, Boonstra was accused of insider trading in which he allegedly earned several hundreds of thousands of euros by trading in

Endemol Endemol B.V. (stylized in all lowercase) was a Dutch-based media company that produced and distributed multiplatform entertainment content. The company annually produced more than 15,000 hours of programming across scripted and non-scripted gen ...

shares (where Sylvia Tóth was a member of the board) just before that company was acquired by the Spanish

Telefónica , S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company with registered office and headquarters located in two different places, both in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the ...

. Boonstra was ultimately acquitted in court as no hard evidence existed that his partner Tóth had shared the information on the impending deal with him. The Dutch press referred to the inside deal as the "pillow talk deal". A few months later, Cor Boonstra was again charged for not reporting trading in

Ahold Koninklijke Ahold N.V. was a Dutch multinational retail company based in Zaandam, Netherlands. Founded in 1887 by Albert Heijn Sr., the company initially began as a single grocery store in Oostzaan and became the largest grocery chain in the ...

shares where he himself was a member of the board. He was found guilty and charged a 135.000 euro fine. Boonstra died on 24 May 2025, at the age of 87.

References

Additional references

* Encyclopedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Article Cor Boonstra, User Falcongj, added 2 January 2004, last edit 4 April 2009

External links

*
Philips Global
- access to worldwide local sites, research, consumer products, Healthcare, lighting etc. {{DEFAULTSORT:Boonstra, Cor 1938 births 2025 deaths 20th-century Dutch businesspeople 21st-century Dutch businesspeople Businesspeople in electronics Chairmen of Philips Dutch chief executives in the manufacturing industry Dutch chief executives in the food industry Dutch corporate directors Dutch technology chief executives People from Leeuwarden Philips employees Unilever people