Out of Office: CEO of German LinkedIn rival Xing takes sabbatical

MUNICH (Reuters) - The chief executive of Xing, a German rival to LinkedIn, said he is taking a three-month sabbatical to develop new ideas and show his employees it's good to have a private life.

"Why a sabbatical? For the same reason that many other people have the desire to take time off. I want to consciously step away from the day-to-day business for a limited amount of time," Thomas Vollmoeller wrote in a statement on the Xing website.

The manager, who said he was writing from a cafe in Sydney, said he wanted to return to work at the start of 2017 with new ideas and a fresh lease of life.

"It is okay to have a private life... It is okay to question things, to have fun at work. And to want to have some time off now and then," Vollmoeller said in the statement.

A spokesman for Xing said Vollmoeller has been travelling since early October and that finance chief Ingo Chu was standing in for him.

Vollmoeller has been CEO of Xing for four years, during which annual revenues have grown by more than two thirds thanks to a growing number of paying subscribers, and its share price has more than quadrupled.

(Reporting by Joern Poltz; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)