The car manufacturer Audi separates from the only woman on the seven-member board. The manager responsible for procurement, Renate Vachenauer (55), will leave the VW subsidiary, which is suffering from poor business, on Wednesday. The supervisory board decided this, as the company announced. The departure will therefore take place “in the best possible mutual agreement”. “Bild” previously reported.
Vachenauer was from 2021 BMW switched to Audi; she has only been a member of the board since April 2023. She will now be succeeded on an interim basis by a man, production director Gerd Walker. The electrical engineer Vachenauer is the second former BMW top manager to leave Audi. In August 2024, sales director Hildegard Wortmann (59), who had also previously worked for the Munich rival, left.
Audi in crisis
Audi again had to record a loss of profit in its half-year figures in July. The car manufacturer generated a profit of 1.3 billion euros after taxes in the first half of the year. That was 37.5 percent less than in the first half of 2024, Audi said. It is the third time in a row that the first half of the year has been significantly worse compared to the previous year.
In 2022, the group based in Ingolstadt reported a profit of 4.4 billion euros. The reasons for the decline in profits are the tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump (79), costs for the group restructuring and weak business in China.
The costs of restructuring the group, including cutting 7,500 jobs Germany by 2029, are significant. The provisions for this reduced profits in the first half of the year by 600 million euros. In the medium term, however, Audi wants to save more than one billion euros per year through the conversion.
Audi also lowered its forecast for the current year in July. Sales expectations are now at 65 to 70 billion euros, 2.5 billion lower than before. Audi is also assuming lower returns for the year as a whole.