Ex-ZF CEO to join VW Group as procurement chief

Former ZF CEO Stefan Sommer, who steered the supplier's 2015 acquisition of TRW, will join Volkswagen Group as procurement chief in January 2019, the automaker announced Monday.

The VW Group supervisory board said that Sommer will succeed Francisco Javier Garcia Sanz, who left the Company in April.

In the wake of VV Group's diesel-emissions cheating scandal, the automaker has overhauled its management board.

Including Sommer, seven new executives will have been named to the management board since the scandal erupted, while only two of the top managers were already part of the executive board before September 2015.

During his more than five years as ZF CEO, Sommer, 55, had amassed a portfolio of autonomous technologies since the supplier acquired TRW for $12.4 billion. Those products, along with ZF's expertise in transmissions and drivetrains, were intended to give the supplier the resources to compete with rivals such as Robert Bosch, Continental and Autoliv.

However, Sommer ran into trouble after unsuccessful bids to buy Swedish brake maker Haldex and commercial-truck autonomous technology maker Wabco Holdings, the latter of which was blocked the chairman of ZF’s parent company, who was worried about the company’s growing debt.

Sommer resigned in December eight days after the supplier’s supervisory board chairman, Giorgio Behr, left the company.

Reuters contributed to this report