Volkswagen brings the former boss of the supplier ZF , Stefan Sommer, on his board to Wolfsburg. The manager becomes the new purchasing manager. Volkswagen 
announced that the Supervisory Board had appointed Sommer effective January 1, 2019 for the procurement department. Sommer follows the long-term purchasing director Francisco Javier Garcia Sanz, who left the group at his own request.
Thus, almost all VW board members – except for two – only after the announcement of the exhaust scandal been appointed in September 2015.
Sommer was chief of the automotive supplier ZF from May 2012 to December 2017. The 55-year-old doctorate in mechanical engineering had thrown a dispute over the future direction of the Group with the most important ZF owner representative – the mayor of the city of Friedrichshafen.
As a new VW purchasing manager, Sommer will have to put pressure on supplier companies in the future. So he will be with the Conflict between the Wolfsburg-based company and the Bosnian entrepreneurial family Hastor have to deal with their supply group Prevent.
Responsible for around 80,000 employees
Summer gets added Volkswagen more power than its predecessor. The Group restructuring initiated by the new CEO Herbert Diess plans to combine purchasing and component plants in the procurement / component unit. This should make the group less centrally managed in the future.
In the future, Sommer will not only be responsible for procurement, but also for the component plants. The division includes 56 factories around the world, including gearboxes, engines and chassis elements with around 80,000 employees. The aim of the specially created division is to make the internal business with components, which are also used in models of VW subsidiaries, more efficient, also with a view to e-mobility.
Court in USA confirms VW comparison with customers
For relief, VW should provide a message from the US. There, a court of appeal in the exhaust gas scandal has confirmed a billion-dollar settlement between the Group and injured US customers. The judges rejected objections to the compromise with numerous class action plaintiffs as unfounded.
Specifically, it was about the legality of an up to about ten billion dollar compensation program that VW had set up mainly for repurchases and repairs of nearly 500,000 diesel vehicles with manipulation software. Some plaintiffs had refused to accept this solution and had appealed.
However, the court dismissed their application and assessed the settlement as “fair and reasonable”. The affected VW customers are likely to have received higher compensation than they could have expected in a lawsuit against the company, it said in the statement.
So far, VW has already booked more than 25 billion euros in legal costs in the exhaust scandal for compensation and penalties in North America.