The CEO of the automotive supplier Mahle, Matthias Arleth, is leaving the company on April 30. Mahle announced on Friday that the “amicable termination of the cooperation” was due to different views on the future strategic orientation of the group.
Until the Supervisory Board decides on a successor, Michael Frick (55), Deputy Chairman of the Management Board, will take over as Chairman of the Management Board. Arleth joined the technology group in January 2022.
The Stuttgart group is in crisis and is struggling with the upheaval in the automotive industry. For a long time, the company had mainly earned its money with parts for the combustion engine.
However, many car manufacturers are increasingly relying on e-mobility, so that the sale of pistons, pumps and filters is no longer a viable business area in the long term.
Background: The powerful chairman of the supervisory board, Heinz Junker, who formed the automotive supplier into a global champion, is after many years of almost unrestricted exercise of power now a problem for Mahle
. The supplier, with 70,000 employees and a turnover of almost ten billion euros an industry heavyweight, owes the engineer Junker a lot; critics also recognize this. He turned a local champion into a global company, transitioned seamlessly to the supervisory board and has been involved in the operative business both intensively and without restraint ever since. Since then, the heads of the company have alternated at ever shorter intervals.