Patrick Ottensmeyer, Former Kansas City Southern CEO, Dies at 67

Posted July 30, 2024

Patrick Ottensmeyer, who served as the final CEO of Kansas City Southern, died on July 28. He was 67.

Canadian Pacific Kansas City, the railroad company formed from the transaction between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern worth $31 billion, confirmed Ottensmeyer’s passing over the weekend.

CPKC honors Ottensmeyer by lowering flags to half-mast across its network.

“Pat’s vision and leadership played a monumental role in the great history of Kansas City Southern as he helped reshape the railway industry,” Canadian Pacific Kansas City CEO Keith Creel said in a release Monday. “We have lost a remarkable leader and a cherished friend.”

“We mourn his tragic passing and extend our deepest condolences to his fiancée Deanne, his entire family, many friends and former colleagues.”

He joined KCS in May 2006 as executive vice president and CFO. He would later go on to become the executive vice president for sales and marketing from 2008 to 2015. He was then named CEO in 2015.

Ottensmeyer received the North American Rail Shippers Association Edward R. Hamberger Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023; a two-time Railway Age Railroader of the Year in 2020 and 2022 and received Progressive Railroading’s Railroad Innovator Award in 2019.

In 2022, Ingram’s named Ottensmeyer Executive of the Year for his part in engineering the nation’s biggest transportation M&A deal in 2021.