In the afternoon he had posted on LinkedIn his thanks to the whole group for the work done in the first six months of the year, in view of the presentation of the accounts, next week. And he had wished happy holidays, because the world‘s second-largest car manufacturer is “fit” for the second half of the year. In the photo he is smiling next to a van launched a few months ago the ID.Buzz, the Bulli in electric version. Evidently the situation was not so serene if a couple of hours later a note announced that the Supervisory Board of the Volkswagen group had decided that the CEO Herbert Diess, 63, under review for several months, will have to leave “by mutual agreement His place at the head of the jewel of the house, Porsche. Oliver Blume, 54, will take over from Diess very soon, starting September 1st. And he will remain in command of the premium brand even after the planned IPO. Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz will also be COO.
In short, an earthquake at the top of the German giant. Diess, whose contract would expire in 2025 (he had been with VW since 2015, the year of the Dieselgate), had actually been under observation for several months. In November he had already been poised both for the attacks of the union leader Daniela Cavallo on the hypothesis of mass layoffs (there was talk of 30 thousand seats) to increase profitability and support the electrification process of the group and for a series of choices strategies that were not entirely shared by the Piëch and Porsche families, the shareholders who control Volkswagen and of which the Bavarian engineer has finally lost full support. The tens of billions plans were not enough to definitively launch the electrification process. In December, the CEO’s role had been partially downsized: he had lost direct responsibility for a crucial market like the Chinese one, but he had been entrusted with software, a fundamental area for development.
In recent months, the internal tug-of-war has gone ahead in a karstic way, fueled in particular by the management of Cariad, the company of the group dedicated to software development, for which a new injection of capital, 3 billion was expected. Uncertainties and delays (according to the German press a couple of years) in a sector that should make the leap in quality in the models to come, have helped to raise the level of the clash. In particular, the uncertainties about the times would have ended up damaging the launch of important premium models, including the new Porsche Macan and the Audi Q6. This latest duel cost Diess his job.