Alexander De Croo

Alexander De Croo
Alexander De Croo (October 2011)
Born	(1975-11-03) 3 November 1975 (age 36) Vilvoorde, Belgium
Nationality	Belgium
Occupation	politician, economist, businessman

Alexander De Croo (Vilvoorde, born 3 November 1975) is a Flemish liberal politician, economist and businessman.^[1] He was elected chairman of his political party (Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats (Open VLD)) on 12 December 2009.

Biography

Alexander De Croo is the son of former Belgian minister and president of the Chamber of Representatives Herman De Croo. In 1998, he graduated in Business Engineering at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He attended Northwestern University in Chicago in 2002 to complete an MBA at the Kellogg School of Management.

Before his political career, Alexander De Croo became a project leader of The Boston Consulting Group in 1999. Starting from 2006, he founded a new company called Darts-ip specialized in providing service to Intellectual Property professionals.^[2][3]

In 2009, he participated for the first time in politics with the European elections of 2009. He received 47.779 preference votes while being positioned tenth on the party ballot.

Chairman of Open VLD

On 26 October 2009, he became a candidate for the presidency of his political party Open VLD to succeed the transitional president Guy Verhofstadt. He chose Vincent Van Quickenborne and Patricia Ceysens as his running mates to compete against Marino Keulen and Gwendolyn Rutten. On 12 December 2009, he was elected president in the second round with 11.676 votes. Marino Keulen received 9.614 votes.^[4] His election is remarkable because he does not have any previous experience practicing a political mandate.^[5]

References

1. ^ Alexanderdecroo.be
2. ^ Darts-ip
3. ^ Alexander De Croo
4. ^ Alexander De Croo is de nieuwe voorzitter van Open Vld, website Open VLD, 12 December 2009
5. ^ Open VLD kiest met Alexander De Croo voor avontuur, De Standaard, 12 December 2009