Management of VW and Porsche
Oliver Blume has come to stay
9/4/2022 3:37 am
Since Thursday he has been the new man at the helm of the Volkswagen Group: Oliver Blume, who is also the head of Porsche. According to him, this double function should remain in place. “The two roles complement each other perfectly,” he says and immediately makes a clear announcement.
The new Volkswagen boss Oliver Blume wants to keep the management of the car group and the subsidiary Porsche permanently. “For me, the dual function was a requirement,” said Blume of “Bild am Sonntag”. “The two roles complement each other ideally: being closely involved operationally in the processes and technologies of a brand in order to make the right strategic decisions in the group.”
Blume called it a “huge advantage” that he had already worked for the four group brands Audi, Seat, Volkswagen and Porsche. “I have a large network, I know the strengths and weaknesses of VW exactly. That’s why I don’t need 100 days of training. On Thursday we started at full speed.” On this day, the 54-year-old took over the reins at the Volkswagen Group. He did not start to cut jobs. “It’s important to me to start with the products first.”
Regarding the dependency on the Chinese market, Blume said: “We can look back on very successful decades in China. And we will continue to be strong there in the future. That’s why we’re investing in innovative technologies.” It is important for him to be equally well positioned in all three major sales markets – Europe, North America and China.
VW sticks to plant in Uyghur region
That also means: Despite the allegations made by the UN of serious human rights violations in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, Blume wants to hold on to the VW plant there. “It’s about taking our values into the world. Also to China, also to the Uyghur region.” He also highlighted that Volkswagen offers “secure, relatively well-paid jobs” to the people of Xinjiang. Volkswagen has been operating a factory in the city of Urumqi in Xinjiang since 2013 together with the Chinese state-owned company Saic.
In a report published this week on the situation of the Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, former UN human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet denounced “serious human rights violations”. The “extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention” of Uyghurs and members of other majority Muslim groups could also constitute “international crimes, particularly crimes against humanity,” the report says.
Human rights activists have been accusing the leadership in Beijing of systematically suppressing the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang for years. More than a million people are being held in camps in the western China region, according to human rights activists. The Chinese authorities are accused, among other things, of forced sterilization and forced labour. China repeatedly dismisses the allegations as “lies”. Beijing also described Bachelet’s report as “completely illegal and invalid”.