Hildegard Wortmann
The experienced car manager will be in charge of sales at VW.
(Photo: Hildegard Wortmann)
Munich, Düsseldorf Hildegard Wortmann has a brief piece of advice: “It pays to be courageous,” says the Audi manager. It is the end of October and Wortmann is describing to students how they made it into the boardroom of the automotive industry as a stranger to the industry. “It doesn’t help to check 23 options, at some point you have to strike,” the former graduate sums up.
It is this mixture of courage and determination that Wortmann is now leading to the VW Group Board. In future, the 55-year-old will be responsible for all sales in the VW Group in addition to Audi – so she has control over a dozen brands and almost ten million cars per year. She is the very first woman on the post and an extremely important support for the ailing CEO Herbert Diess.
He had previously managed sales himself, but increasingly lost access to the problems. Because there are no semiconductors, VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat cannot deliver enough cars. In China, the most important market, sales are slowing down.
Volkswagen has to get its electric offensive on the road and digitize retail. Each brand has its own sales department with all the vanities and rivalries. It is a mammoth task waiting for Hildegard Wortmann.
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This has poached Wortmann from BMW
Diess trusts her to do this job – we know each other from BMW times together. “I called there and asked if they had a job,” she remembers of her entry at the end of the 1990s, after having previously looked after brands such as Calvin Klein at Unilever.
Wortmann goes to the BMW subsidiary Mini and cleverly gives the brand a new lease of life. She will then be responsible for product management at BMW, positioning off-road vehicles and electric cars. It offends in a company dominated by engineers, but it has sponsors like the former BMW boss Harald Krüger. The path to the board of directors remains denied her – in 2018 she will be preferred to the non-industry Pieter Nota.
Disappointed, she initially gives in, takes over sales in Asia and moves to Singapore. Herbert Diess reports there and offers her the sales department at Audi. The temptation to switch to a rival is great. Diess had previously poached Markus Duesmann from the BMW board of directors for the Audi chief position. Not only that connects the two. Duesmann and Wortmann are Münsterländer.
What follows is the long turning point that was due after the diesel scandal. Model icons like the TT are being removed from the portfolio, everything is geared towards electromobility, and the last combustion engine is to be sold in 2033. With “Artemis”, Audi is planning a completely new generation of cars for the luxury class, with which the VW subsidiary intends to position itself at the top of the industry again in 2025.
Wortmann and Duesmann are breaking up structures at Audi. Where board members used to be addressed as Professor, there is now a casual “you” on the management floor. “We need good guys,” says Wortmann. Her repertoire is one of her strengths: she knows the language of screwdrivers as well as appearing on the big stage. She can race and represent.
Sales will be upgraded within the group
The fact that there is a Group Sales Director at Volkswagen for the first time in six years is mainly due to the Porsche-Piëch family, who wanted to reintroduce this position. Hans Michel Piëch, one of the two family spokesmen and one of the most influential members of the Volkswagen Supervisory Board, is personally advised by Christian Klingler.
Klingler is the last group sales director that there was in Wolfsburg. The Austrian resigned in autumn 2015 when the Board of Management was reorganized after the diesel scandal was uncovered at Volkswagen, and the sales department was dissolved at that time. Thereafter, the group sales was usually settled with the CEO.
The family believes that it is indispensable to have a separate department because it strengthens group sales across all brands. At Audi, Hildegard Wortmann made a good name for herself as head of sales, it was said in corporate circles about her appointment. So it is no surprise that she got the position that has now been reintroduced. Your mission in Wolfsburg can begin.
More: Volkswagen’s supervisory board decides to reorganize its board of management – Diess remains