Opel is in crisis – and should be sold to PSA. The former finance manager Michael Lohscheller should guide Opel as the new boss. What are his biggest challenges?
Michael Lohscheller
Monday, 12.06.2017
20:14 clock
As man for the numbers came to finance boss Michael Lohscheller Opel, as new CEO, he will now continue. The 48-year-old is to transfer the General Motors subsidiary Opel / Vauxhall into the PSA Group – and is responsible for 38,000 employees worldwide. The specifications of the French are clear: Opel must make a profit by 2020, said PSA boss Carlos Tavares in an interview,
Within 100 days of around 2.2 billion euro takeover therefore the management is to submit a plan on how the ambitious goal was to create – end of July is the earliest date for the sale, In the course of this acquisition, there is still much to do for Michael Lohscheller: The approval by the antitrust authorities is still pending, the employees demand a concept for the preservation of jobs – and the strategic alignment between combustion engines for the current mass market and e-mobility for the Future market holds inflammation.
Lohscheller brings experience to solve all these questions: Daimler, Mitsubishi Motors Europe, Volkswagen were among his employers. Prior to joining Opel in 2012, he served as Vice President and CFO of Volkswagen in America. Finance, IT, Purchasing, Logistics – in more than 20 years of professional experience, the father of two had responsibility in many areas. But if he also holds the takeover?
Hard-core restructuring under Lohscheller expected
Predecessor Karl-Thomas Neumann congratulated the new board boss on Twitter. With Lohscheller, Opel receives a boss, “who knows the company well, that’s the good news of the day,” wrote Neumann.
According to Opel Neumann should remain part of the management until the end of the sale, but his voice counts less. He had not managed to make the Rüsselsheim Group profitable in the past four years. The planned by Neumann complete conversion to electromobility by 2030 is also unrealistic, criticized auto-expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer of the University of Duisburg-Essen. Neumann called his resignation “a difficult, personal decision”,
Read here an analysis of the merger plans
With Lohscheller, the Peugeot Citroen Group PSA hopes for more success. Company boss Carlo Tavares stated that he supported the appointment “wholeheartedly”. The cooperation has so far been extremely positive. Lohscheller knows Opel very well and has a sound understanding of the international market, said Tavares. He is pleased to participate in the “rebirth of Opel as a sustainable, German-based company within the PSA Group”.
The trained businessman Lohscheller now faces the difficult task of reliably and cheaply supplying as much conventional propulsion as required from Paris – and so much e-mobility that Opel will not eventually be handled under the PSA umbrella as a weak division. In which direction does it attract him? What this means for about the electric production car “Ampera E”, which was developed by GM and only once comes in small quantities to the European market?
In any case, Lohscheller is considered a man who does not shy away from reforms. “We are now clearly attacking,” he told the Handelsblatt about a year ago. Dudenhöffer expects under Lohscheller even a “hard-hitting restructuring” – otherwise the specifications from Paris in the current situation are not achievable. Specifically, PSA wants to save 1.7 billion euros annually after the takeover through higher efficiency. That the choice fell on Lohscheller, considers Dudenhöffer probably therefore also plausible: “This is the man who knows the costs at Opel best.”