If everything goes as the corporate strategists want in the background, VW brand manager Herbert Diess could this Thursday to succeed the incumbent CEO Matthias Müller be determined.
As the SPIEGEL learned from circles around the Supervisory Board, the Revirement will turn out to be even more extensive than previously known. Specifically, it is about a possible replacement of Francisco Javier Garcia Sanz, who is responsible for the procurement department.
On the credit side, the manager could use his successes in negotiations with the US authorities in connection with the exhaust scandal lead into the field. On the other hand, he was responsible for the massive problems with the supplier Prevent. In 2016, the production was in some VW plants had almost come to a standstill because Sanz could not reach an agreement with Prevent – or had allowed too much dependence on the one supplier.
picture alliance / dpa
Purchasing Director Francisco Javier Garcia Sanz
Gunnar Kilian could become Chief Human Resources Officer
His generous use of the company’s aviation readiness is also remembered by those responsible. At the end of last year, Sanz had repaid just under € 950,000 to the Group after Supervisory Board Chairman Ferdinand Piëch declared the travel bills inadmissible.
Truck business to move to Munich
Another staff concerns Gunnar Kilian. The former Secretary General in the works council is to become the new head of personnel and thus follow Karlheinz Blessing. It is also possible that CEO Müller remains in the group and receives a new function. The regular contract of the 64-year-old will run until 2020.
Also, a revision of important structures is being considered, affirmed sources from the environment of the Group. How concrete these plans could already be discussed or even decided upon at the Supervisory Board meeting, however, remained unclear at first.
According to SPIEGEL information, the individual brands should be divided into four groups – for volume models (core brand VW, Skoda, Seat), luxury-class cars (Audi), sports car under the project name “Super Premium” (Porsche, Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini) and commercial vehicles (MAN, Scania, light commercial vehicles). For some time now, there has been a separate spin-off of the truck business together with its own IPO or holding company structure.
For heavy commercial vehicles, in turn, according to Group sources, a move of the administrative center from Braunschweig to Munich is due. Also, an IPO of the division with Scania and MAN is considered possible. Lower Saxony’s SPD Prime Minister Stephan Weil had made a strong case for the division in Braunschweig. Munich is already home to MAN.
Delegate decisions
On Tuesday, VW had surprisingly announced a reorganization of the management floor, the information was still very vague. Supervisory Board members said that the CEO, who has been in office since the autumn of 2015, was accused of being weak in the decision-making process internally. The planned conversion is therefore to enable a “departure” in the world’s largest carmaker. This does not go fast enough under Müller.
The 59-year-old Diess has been considered for some time as a possible successor miller. In his time as head of the brand VW with models such as Golf or Passat, he has already improved the efficiency of the low-earning Wolfsburg. He also does not shy away from conflicts with the works council, but is also controversial in parts of the workforce.
Had the last profound conversion at the top of the group Volkswagen Completed in 2012. At that time, the Group deepened, among other things, the alliance of its commercial vehicle businesses, built the activities in China and recruited dozens of management positions – at VW itself, but also at Audi, light commercial vehicles, Bentley and other areas.
“Dieselgate” then increased the pressure to save costs. In 2015, a separation of Group and brand functions was initiated. The responsibility of the sales regions was also strengthened. Thus, VW created its own market region North America, where the core brand drove behind the competition for a long time. Later Müller called out the “Strategy 2025” – one goal was the dismantling of centralism in the VW Reich. “It is now also possible to delegate things,” he said in 2016.