Meager three months after taking office As Volvo boss, Jim Rowan sets a scent mark for the first time. As of June 20, the CEO will slim down the car manufacturer’s board of directors by four posts. Instead of the previous eleven, there will only be seven people on the board in future. Henrik Green (Chief Product Officer), Anders Gustafsson (Head of Americas), Arek Nowinski (Head of EMEA), Xiaolin Yuan (Head of APAC) and Lex Kerssemakers (Global Commercial Operations) will no longer have a place on the Executive Board.
Kerssemakers is retiring after 38 years at Volvo but will continue to advise the company. In the future, the other people affected will only belong to an extended group of top management, as a spokesman explained. Yuan, Gustafsson and Nowinski will each serve as presidents for their respective regions. Starting next week, Green will only be Head of Global Advanced Technology & Sustainability and will be part of the extended management team along with five other managers at this rank.
They will then no longer report to CEO Rowan, but to his new deputies: Björn Annwall and Javier Varela. They come from their own ranks, Annwall was previously CFO, Varela Head of Engineering and Operations, he is moving up to the board. Both top managers will receive new roles and additional powers as part of the restructuring. Anwall will become Chief Commercial Officer, he should take care of better linking the stationary retail business with the digital one. At Varela, all topics related to production, research and development are bundled.
Volvo boss Rowan said in a statement that he wanted to simplify the structure with clear responsibilities, improve implementation and intensify collaboration across the company. The restructuring of the board of directors at the car manufacturer is not yet complete. Volvo is looking for a new chief financial officer as Bjorn Annwall is stepping down. Johan Ekdahl temporarily takes on that task, but apparently it shouldn’t become a permanent solution.
Three women on the board, but none in the top 3
In addition to Rowan, Annwall, Varela and, for the time being, Ekdahl, there are also three women in the executive management team at Volvo: chief legal officer Maria Hemberg, HR manager Hanna Fager and the head of the communications department, Olivia Ross-Wilson. However, as mentioned, the three most important posts are held by men.
Rowan did not like the structures that his predecessor Håkan Samuelsson left behind at Volvo. The board was bloated, but on the level below, the 71-year-old had lost many top people at the end of his almost ten-year tenure. A striking number of women were among them, as manager magazin reported last November
. He was happy to tell the story of the smart, digital and also diverse transformer Volvo, which wants to be exclusively electric from 2030. Critics accused Samuelsson, on the other hand, that the CEO was only concerned with himself, especially with regard to the IPO at the end of 2021.
Former Dyson boss Rowan will continue the brand’s electric course. He has also set the goal of becoming a fully circular automobile manufacturer by 2040. The man who is being demoted the most in the current restructuring is supposed to ensure this: CPO Henrik Green.