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Management chaos at Just Eat Takeaway:
The Lieferando owner loses two top managers
PHOTO: ERIC GAILLARD / REUTERS
The Lieferando owner Just Eat Takeaway has to build a new management team in the middle of the crisis.
On Wednesday, the Dutch company surprisingly announced shortly before the start of the general meeting that the chairman of the supervisory board,
Adriaan Nühn , and the COO
Jörg Gerbig
, who is responsible for the operative business,
would not stand for re-election.
Corrine Vigreux
, co-founder of the technology company Tom Tom, will temporarily
take over the position of Nühn, who recently got into serious trouble.
There is a formal complaint against Gerbig, the founder of the German brand Lieferando, because of alleged personal misconduct at a company event, as the company further announced.
Therefore, internal investigations were started and the manager was released from all his offices with immediate effect.
Depending on the outcome of the investigation, which has nothing to do with financial obligations, a return to the board is possible.
The Lieferando founder himself was initially unavailable for comment.
Gerbig founded the Berlin delivery service in 2009 and five years later sold it to Europe's largest food delivery service for 63 million euros.
The long-time chairman of the supervisory board, Nühn, has been criticized for a long time because the board of directors is not diverse enough and the share has been plummeting for months.
He has now decided to resign so that the board can focus on the current challenges and ensure the trust of shareholders.
Delivery Hero not interested in Grubhub
Just Eat Takeaway is under pressure to drive growth even after the Corona boom, to get into the black and to find a good solution for the US subsidiary Grubhub, which was only bought in 2021 for $7.3 billion.
The new unrest caused by the staff departures did not go down well on the stock market.
The takeaway paper fell up to 8 percent to EUR 24.20 and thus continued its series of losses.
This year it has already gone down by 45 percent.
There should be many questions at the general meeting about the future of the unpopular US subsidiary, the purchase of which has already been much criticized.
Major shareholder Cat Rock also spoke out against the re-election of CFO
Brent Wissink
.
Company boss
Jitse Groen
(43) recently stated that he would play through various strategic options at Grubhub – including a sale.
Delivery Hero meanwhile waved it off.
Company boss
Niklas Östberg
said: "Delivery Hero is only watching from the sidelines."
Similar to Groen, he has promised to be profitable at the group level in the coming year.
Both companies made billions in losses last year.
In view of the deep red numbers, a Just Eat Takeaway employee ski trip to the Swiss Alps also came under criticism.
Groen defended the action as saying it was good for staff morale.
mg/Reuters