At the automotive supplier ZF Friedrichshafen moves Holger Klein to the top of the board. The 52-year-old will replace Wolf-Henning Scheider (60) at the end of the year as the company announced on Friday
. Klein has been a member of the Management Board since autumn 2018 and is currently responsible for the Asia-Pacific region, among other things. He moved to Lake Constance in 2014 from the management consultancy McKinsey.
As an industrial engineer, Klein is firmly involved in the strategic planning process for the coming years, said the chairman of the supervisory board, Heinrich Hiesinger (62). In doing so, he will “dynamically continue the successfully started transformation at ZF and supplement it with his own impulses”. The 52-year-old made a name for himself at ZF in connection with the takeover of the US supplier TRW Automotive, which was completed in 2017.
In the spring of 2022, Scheider announced at the ZF balance sheet conference that he wanted to withdraw from the automotive industry of his own accord in the coming year. That was a purely private decision, he explained in March, working at ZF was the “most fulfilling time” of his career. It is not known in which industry Scheider is moving.
CFO resigns, new commercial vehicle board comes
The longstanding ZF CFO Konstantin Sauer is also leaving Scheider. Sauer has held the office since 2010. The supervisory board will decide on his successor in a timely manner, the statement said. The supervisory board has already found a new board member for commercial vehicle and industrial technology: Peter Laier was board member of the Knorr-Bremse brake group until the end of 2021 and was also responsible for the commercial vehicle business there. The 54-year-old is to replace Wilhelm Rehm at ZF.
Despite problems in supply chains and the ongoing pandemic, the auto supplier ZF exceeded its pre-Corona level in terms of sales and profits last year. At 38.3 billion euros, sales in 2021 were around 1.8 billion euros higher than in 2019. Net profit rose to 783 million euros, compared to 400 million euros in 2019. For the year 2020, ZF had to record a loss. According to earlier information, the foundation company had around 157,500 employees and 188 production sites in 31 countries worldwide.