Opel boss Karl-Thomas Neumann resigns. Successor will, according to the company, the previous CFO Michael Lohscheller. The takeover by PSA-Peugeot-Citroën should not hinder this.
imago / onemorepicture
Opel manager Neumann
Monday, 12.06.2017
16:42 clock
New boss of Opel becomes the former Chief Financial Officer Michael Lohscheller. He succeeds Karl-Thomas Neumann, who resigned on Monday, as the automobile company in Rüsselsheim announced. Accordingly, Neumann will remain a member of the management until the sale of Opel / Vauxhall to the French Peugeot Group PSA is completed.
This will ensure a seamless transition during the sale, they said. The signing of the sale announced in March by the American parent company General Motors is expected until autumn. Neumann said the resignation had been “a difficult, personal decision”. About the step had already been speculated on the weekend, but confirmation was still pending.
“I have no doubt that Opel / Vauxhall will be even more successful and stronger with the move to the PSA Group and I will focus fully on completing this transaction and then take the time to decide on my personal next steps “, Neumann announced. He had the European subsidiary of the US company General Motors (GM) 
led since 2013, but failed to bring them back into the profit zone.
By 2020, Opel should make profit again
Neumann had always described the acquisition by PSA as correct. Possibly arrived at PSA his ambitious plans for electromobility but not good: The planned by Neumann complete conversion of the brand Opel by 2030 is unrealistic, said car expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer of the University of Duisburg-Essen. For a volume brand like Opel, one should not neglect conventional drives so much because they could still be the much larger field of business for a long time to come.
The new boss, Lohscheller, has been a member of the Opel Executive Board since September 2012 and, since July 2014, has been Chief Financial Officer and Chief Financial Officer of the Opel Group. The business graduate had many years of experience in the automotive industry before joining Opel: Lohscheller worked for Daimler, Mitsubishi and Volkswagen. The 48-year-old is married and has two children. Works council leader Wolfgang Schäfer-Klug said that the decision for Lohscheller was “explicitly welcomed” by the employees.
PSA is to pay for Opel including Vauxhall and the financial sector around 2.2 billion euros. Opel and Vauxhall together have around 40,000 employees, around 18,000 of whom work for Opel in Germany. The acquisition still requires the approval of the competition authorities.
Opel must after a takeover quickly into the profit zone, PSA boss Carlos Tavares told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”: “You have to be open and honest: the only thing that protects employees is profit.” By 2020, the company should therefore be profitable again – the plan for it should be 100 days after the acquisition. “All executives are invited to walk with me, all they need to know is that they can not stay that way,” Tavares said.