The former Volkswagen brand manager Herbert Diess will be the new CEO. He replaces predecessor Matthias Müller, as the VW Supervisory Board decided.
Herbert Diess
Thursday, 12.04.2018
19:53 clock
Herbert Diess is the new CEO of Volkswagen-Konzerns. On Thursday, the supervisory board appointed the 59-year-old VW brand leader to head the world’s largest carmaker with more than 600,000 employees. Of the former CEO Matthias Müller retired with immediate effect as CEO, but not from the company, said VW. Accordingly, he will fulfill his contract until 2020.
Since autumn 2015 – since “Dieselgate” with millions of manipulated diesel vehicles – acting previous CEO miller should be accused of weakness in decision-making internally. Only on Tuesday had VW announced surprisinglyto rebuild the management floor.
Supervisory Board Chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch thanked the former CEO Müller. He took over the company in the autumn of 2015, when the company faced the greatest challenge of its history with exhaust emissions fraud.
Reorganization of the brand
The group will be in six business units and the China region divided. This should make Volkswagen clearer and easier to control.
The CEOs responsible for the brand groups assume additional management responsibilities within the Group. This should be relieved CEO Diess. With the biggest reorganization in the company history is a Stühlerücken in the board accompanied. Next to purchasing manager Francisco Garcia Sanz Personnel director Karlheinz Blessing has to take his hat off. For him, the former Secretary General and confidant of Works Council Director Bernd Osterloh, Gunnar Kilian, joins the Board.
So far, this was Mark Brand
Herbert Diess came as brand manager to VW – only three months after the announcement of the diesel scandal in the fall of 2015. The new had to publicly apologize again and again for his employer, the prosecutor’s office in 2016 initiated financial investigations in connection with the affair against Diess.
The diesel scandal has cost many managers at VW head and so made room for new faces.
Winterkorn It was this that brought Diess to Volkswagen to increase the profitability of the core brand. Since then, the manager has impressively succeeded. He has cut the high costs and increased the weak profit margin.
Previously Chief Executive Officer of BMW
That he can do that, Diess had previously shown at the Munich competitor BMW. There he first directed various works before the motorcycle fan in 2003 became head of the BMW motorcycle division. Since 2007, he has served on the Executive Board, initially for procurement. Here he enforced billions in cuts against the suppliers. Later, as development director, he campaigned for the expansion of the hybrid car range.
This does not shy away from conflicts with the works council and was in the clinch with works council boss Bernd Osterloh because of the savings program called “Future Pact”. He is considered part of the workforce but also as controversial.
The father of three children would have liked to become boss of BMW at that time, but he lost to the current boss Harald Krüger. His ambition has now paid off for the much larger Volkswagen Group.
At the helm of the overall group, this is expected to present numerous challenges. Building a wide range of electric cars will cost the Group a lot of money and effort. The interests of the powerful works council and the most important shareholders – the founding families Porsche and Piëch, the Emirate Qatar and the state Lower Saxony – want to be balanced. Diess will have to fight for their trust just as much as for the trust of the customers disappointed with the diesel manipulations.