VW CEO Herbert Diess
The CEO remains, but has to give up some responsibilities.
(Photo: dpa)
Hamburg After several weeks of power struggle with parts of the supervisory board, VW CEO Herbert Diess is to keep his office. In addition, however, the head of the Volkswagen core brand, Ralf Brandstätter, will move up to the board in the new year, as the company announced on Thursday. In the future, Diess himself will primarily deal with strategic issues in the largest European car group, such as the new Cariad software division.
The CEO should retain control of the volume brands as a whole. However, from August 2022 on, Brandstätter will be responsible for the important and recently significantly weaker China business that was previously assigned to Diess. Skoda boss Thomas Schäfer will then take over responsibility for the main brand VW Pkw on the group board.
As of February 1, Hauke Stars will join the top committee as board member for the newly created IT and organization department and Audi manager Hildegard Wortmann will be responsible for sales. This increases the number of members to eleven.
Chief Legal Counsel Manfred Döss will take over the department for integrity and law from the outgoing board member Hiltrud Werner. HR director Gunnar Kilian received a new contract.
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The decisions were preceded by speculation about Diess’ future. The mixed solution found should now be a compromise. The situation at VW had been extremely tense since the end of September. Supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch once again had to mediate intensively between all those involved.
There was another confrontation with the works council after Diess is said to have thought out loud in a meeting of the control committee about the possibly necessary cancellation of tens of thousands of jobs. Previously, according to information from corporate circles, he had asked other managers for further savings proposals – bypassing the very influential workforce representation at VW.
Works council chief Daniela Cavallo had sharply attacked Diess internally as well as in a works meeting. The state of Lower Saxony, as the second largest VW shareholder, had also indicated that it was no longer fully behind its communication strategy. Prime Minister and co-supervisor Stephan Weil spoke of an atmosphere of “uncertainty that is spreading everywhere”.
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