The head of the automobile giant Volkswagen Herbert Diess will leave the management of the group to be replaced from September by the current chairman of the board of directors of Porsche, Oliver Blume, a subsidiary of the group that points to the stock market, Volkswagen announced on Friday.
This surprise exit was decided “by mutual consent” during a meeting of Volkswagen’s supervisory board, according to a press release. Herbert Diess had been on the bench for months in a context of internal turmoil within the giant of the twelve brands on a forced march towards the electric and connected car. But until now he had always saved his head.
“Herbert Diess played a key role in the ongoing transformation of the company during his tenure” at the helm of Volkswagen and the eponymous brand, supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch said in a statement. “He not only steered the company through extremely difficult waters, but he also strategically realigned it,” he added.
turning the page on dieselgate
At the end of 2021, Herbert Diess, coming from BMW with a reputation as an uncompromising manager, emerged victorious from a period of tension with powerful staff representatives. At the origin of the internal turbulence, the management style and the electrification strategy of the fiery Austrian boss, who took the wheel of Volkswagen in 2018 with the ambition of definitively turning the page on dieselgate, the scandal of the rigged engine that tarnishes the image of the group in 2015.
Since the beginning of the year, Herbert Diess had already had to hand over responsibility for operations in China, a strategic market, to another company heavyweight, obtaining in compensation the supervision of the Cariad entity, a Volkswagen unit responsible for coding software. at the heart of the electric and connected revolution initiated by the automotive industry.
Ironically, due to the slow progress made by Cariad, Porsche recently decided to break the association with this unit to develop its own IT solutions. Future Volkswagen strongman Oliver Blume joined the group in 1994 and has since held management positions at the Audi, Seat, Volkswagen and Porsche brands, which he has headed since 2015. He has been a member of the Volkswagen Board of Management since 2018. “What is decisive for success is team spirit, fair play and passion”, underlined Oliver Blume on a last trip to the outgoing.
Source: BFM TV
