Berlin: The chief of German software maker SAP, Bill McDermott, said in a media report on September 17 he lost an eye in an accident but would be back at his desk at headquarters next month.
McDermott said he slipped this summer in the United States on carpeted stairs with a glass of water in his hand in an accident that left a shard of glass embedded in his left eye.
Surgeons initially saved the eye before an infection forced them to remove it and replace it with an artificial eye, the 54-year-old told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
"I'm still alive and that is not a given after such a serious accident," the chief executive was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
New York-born McDermott, who usually divides his time between the US and Germany, said he would be allowed to fly again in October and return to company headquarters in Walldorf in southwestern Germany.
"I am fully there for SAP," he was quoted as saying. "Of course all along I stayed in regular contact with the supervisory board and its chairman Hasso Plattner."
McDermott, formerly an SAP co-chief, has since May 2014 single-handedly led Europe's largest software company with 74,000 employees and annual turnover of nearly 18 billion euros ($20 billion).
