Who is the new VW boss?: Team player Blume replaces lone wolf Diess

Who is the new VW boss?
Team player Blume replaces lone wolf Diess

Oliver Blume has been working in the group since 1994, and now he has reached the top post: he will become the new CEO of Volkswagen – and is to establish a new management style, the team spirit. But the tasks are big. And just in time for the change in personnel, there are also reports about Blume’s proximity to politics.

Alone at the top would be nothing for Oliver Blume – because the Porsche boss sees team spirit as a recipe for overcoming crises and celebrating success. In almost every interview, Blume mentions how important it is for employees to be involved and for managers to work together. “The better the team works together, the better we can master these challenges together,” he once told the “Handelsblatt”.

That is probably exactly what Blume, as head of Volkswagen, should do differently from his predecessor Herbert Diess, who often took a confrontational course against the unions. Blume should continue to push the transformation with the entire board, is the last sentence in the group’s announcement about the surprising change. “With a management culture that focuses on team spirit.”

The tall, boyish-looking 54-year-old stands for a luxury product with Porsche vehicles, but does not come across as elitist or arrogant. “Oliver Blume is a team player who doesn’t push himself to the fore,” say people close to him. If no consensus can be reached, don’t shy away from having the last word.

The boss of the Stuttgart VW subsidiary Porsche has long been considered a possible future CEO. Since joining Audi in 1994, his career has taken him to various brands and to the Group’s headquarters. The graduate mechanical engineer worked his way through production at Audi, Seat and the core brand Volkswagen before becoming CEO of the sports car manufacturer in 2015. Three years later, the man from Lower Saxony moved up to the Group Executive Board, where he assumed responsibility for Group-wide production and at times for the luxury brands Bugatti and Bentley.

More independence required for Porsche

The “corporate child” is a manager who doesn’t want to offend and certainly “not a revolutionary who would completely turn things around,” says one of the insiders. This distinguishes him from Diess, who gave the tanker VW a radical change of course and did not avoid any conflict.

With a return of 16 percent, the VW subsidiary Porsche is not only the most profitable German car manufacturer and a cash cow for the Wolfsburg-based group. As Porsche boss, Blume also guards the crown jewel, the home of the VW founding families, Porsche and Piech. The family therefore has confidence in him. For a long time there was no row with the works council at Porsche, where the signs have been pointing to growth for a number of years. It remains to be seen how Blume will master a conflict with the self-confident VW group works council.

With the Porsche IPO planned for later this year, Blume has a major project ahead of him, which he can now approach as VW and Porsche boss from two sides. At the Capital Markets Day earlier in the week, Blume had argued that the owner VW should give Porsche even more independence as an incentive for an IPO. “That gives us more speed when making decisions.” Now he’s like his own boss.

The Porsche boss’ biggest job in recent years was to steer the manufacturer of high-horsepower models with roaring engines into the age of climate-friendly electric drives. As the first pure e-Porsche, the Taycan 2020 got off to a good start and is selling just as often as the 911. The Swabian style icon should keep an internal combustion engine despite climate protection.

To this end, Blume dared to tackle a project that is not only intended to save a niche product in the electronic age. Together with Siemens Energy and the Italian energy supplier Enel, Porsche is investing in a plant in Patagonia that uses wind power to generate emission-free synthetic fuel, so-called e-fuels. In order to achieve a large production volume, Blume wants to win customers from the aviation and shipping industries as allies. With the plan, Blume prevailed against Diess, who relied entirely on battery electrics, explains an observer. “He also has backbone. He doesn’t go along with everything the board of directors wants.”

Close contact with Lindner?

In order to support the not uncontroversial e-fuels, Blume also kept in touch with politics. One day after Finance Minister and FDP leader Christian Lindner prevented approval of the EU-wide complete ban on combustion engines within the traffic light coalition with reference to e-fuels, Blume is said to have celebrated this as a success, according to a ZDF report. “Christian Lindner has kept me up to date almost every hour in the last few days,” said Blume at a works meeting. “We have a very large share in the fact that the e-fuels were included in the coalition agreement. We were a main driver there, with very close contact to the coalition parties.” According to the satirical program “Die Anstalt”, it has “evidence that verifies this statement”.

Lindner doesn’t want to leave it like that. His position on e-fuels has been known for years, according to the personal statement Twitter channel of the minister. “Accordingly, in June he commented on the EU’s plan to phase out combustion engines and acted within the federal government. There was no previous contact with Mr. Blume and no other influence,” it said. A Porsche spokesman said the editorial network Germany: “There was no such exchange. It is correct that the company maintains a constructive exchange with all relevant stakeholders.”

Blume’s climate protection promises are not only put to the test in public, but also in his own family: his wife and two daughters, who are almost grown up, discussed the diesel scandal, sustainability or social commitment by Porsche with him, as Blume wrote in a podcast by “Wirtschaftswoche” told. That forces him to think about what raison d’etre an automobile manufacturer has today and what values ​​it must stand for. Keeping his feet on the ground, his family makes sure of that.


source site-32