The Volkswagen Group advertises the competitor BMW whose purchasing manager Markus Duesmann. The Supervisory Board has decided to offer the manager a position on the Executive Board, said Volkswagen on Tuesday in Wolfsburg. Duesmann would take up his duties as soon as he was available. With which function Duesmann comes to VW, is still unclear. “The position of the Audi CEO is only one of several options,” it said from circles of the Supervisory Board.
Audi CEO Rupert Stadler, who is also a member of the VW Group Board, sitting in the context of the exhaust gas scandal for more than a month in custody. Since then he has been on leave, and Sales Director Bram Schot leads the VW subsidiary Audi provisionally.
Earlier, the “Handelsblatt” reported that Duesmann should be the new CEO of Audi. Duesmann has, according to group circles, a competition clause in his contract. At the earliest in half a year, but later he could start at Audi, they say.
Will he be the new Audi boss?
In addition, the contract with the arrested Stadler would have to be dissolved beforehand. This has not happened yet. For this reason, Duesmann for the time being in the VW Group Board “parked”, it says in business circles. It is also conceivable that he could run the VW brand instead of Audi, but it is more likely that Duesmann takes on Stadler’s previous seat.
Duesmann is not the first prominent manager who moves from Munich to Wolfsburg. VW CEO Herbert Diess went to Wolfsburg in 2015, after being denied the way to the BMW top. He initially headed the core brand VW Passenger Cars until he replaced Matthias Müller as Group CEO in April. He was most recently responsible for the development department of the Munich team before former VW boss Martin Winterkorn took him to Wolfsburg.
The Westphalian Duesmann is 49 years old and has been a member of the BMW Executive Board since October 2016. The mechanical engineer has been with the Group since 2007, previously working at Daimler, among others. Recently, Duesmann at BMW as a purchasing manager had, among other things, the securing of the supply of raw materials for the batteries in future electric cars in view. The manager is also an expert in motorsport and worked for both Mercedes-Benz and BMW in the respective Formula 1 teams.