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Herbert Diess: Surprising emergency braking
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Carsten Koall / picture alliance / dpa
Herbert Diess resigns as CEO of the Volkswagen Group.
The company surprisingly announced on Friday evening that the 63-year-old had agreed with the supervisory board to leave on September 1st.
Successor is to be Porsche boss Oliver Blume.
Blume is to continue in his current position in parallel.
He is currently working on an IPO for Porsche AG, which should go ahead in the fall.
At VW, 54-year-old Blume will be supported operationally by Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz, who will also be responsible for day-to-day business in the future.
The former BMW manager Diess has been leading VW since April 2018. The supervisory board has agreed with the 63-year-old to leave, Volkswagen said.
Chairman of the Supervisory Board Hans Dieter Pötsch thanked Diess.
"During his time as CEO of the Volkswagen brand and of the Group, he played a key role in driving forward the transformation of the company."
Diess pushed the conversion of VW in e-mobility significantly.
However, there have recently been a number of problems, especially with the sluggish and increasingly expensive development of in-house software and IT systems.
Diess' post at Volkswagen had previously wobbled: last year, a power struggle between the manager and employee representatives escalated.
After severe criticism of his leadership, Diess handed over responsibility for the core VW brand in order to get more “freedom”, as it was called at the time.
Even then, Porsche boss Blume was traded as a possible successor to Diess.
His name had been mentioned several times behind the scenes as the conflict between the VW boss and the powerful works council escalated.
Even before that, there had been violent differences of opinion between Diess and parts of the supervisory board about the further strategy and about a possible drastic job cut at Europe's largest car manufacturer.
mic/Reuters/dpa
