Lea Corzilius (34) will become the new Board Member for Human Resources, Legal Affairs and Compliance at the automotive supplier on August 1 ZF Friedrichshafen. She replaces Sabine Jaskula (55), whose departure the company announced in February. However, Jaskula is leaving earlier than previously communicated, her contract was valid until the end of the year.
Corzilius knows the challenges of the supplier industry from her previous station. From October 2017 to April 2023 she worked at Hella, from October 2020 she was Head of Human Resources. After Hellas was taken over by the French supplier Faurecia, Corzilius made use of a special right of termination
– around 1.2 million euros in compensation included.
Corzilius now takes on a delicate mission at Lake Constance. ZF Friedrichshafen is in the middle of the biggest transformation in the company’s history. The transmission specialist is increasingly switching to business with electromobility and software, including through takeovers of the US groups TRW and Wabco.
But when it comes to refinancing the multi-billion acquisitions, things are getting stuck. By 2027, ZF will have to repay almost ten billion euros. It will be difficult to do this on your own, and business has recently stalled – as with many automotive suppliers. In 2022, the return on sales was a meager 2.5 percent, and free cash flow almost halved to 544 million euros.
Among other things, sales of divisions should help, but so far they haven’t gotten very far. One thing is clear: it won’t work without internal cost-cutting measures. Corzilius plays a key role in this. In Germany alone, around 9,000 jobs at ZF will be at risk by 2032, and there could be even more as manager magazin reported in April
.
“Here it burns brightly”
The powerful works council around chairman Achim Dietrich (54) had therefore sounded the alarm and demanded perspectives from management. The atmosphere in the huge ZF empire – the supplier employs around 164,000 people worldwide – is tense. “It’s ablaze here,” says one manager.
Can Corzilius calm things down? Predecessor Sabine Jaskula repeatedly had to struggle with the employee representatives
. Critics had also accused her of lacking assertiveness. ZF also no longer had the charisma of days gone by; the supplier had slipped in employer rankings in recent years.
Not a long start-up time for Lea Corzilius, but she doesn’t need it at all, said the head of the supervisory board Heinrich Hiesinger (63) in the official announcement. After all, Corzilius knows “the supplier industry and its current challenges very well”. An advantage for the new HR manager could be that her future boss should be a familiar face: CEO Holger Klein (53), like Corzilius, has a past at McKinsey, both of whom worked at the consultancy in Düsseldorf at times.