FRANKFURT -- Daimler is revamping the management of its finance, production and development portfolios to remove duplicate layers between Mercedes-Benz and Daimler.
The reorganization will see Daimler's top management tighten control over the group's flagship Mercedes-Benz luxury-car unit.
The changes include:
- Markus Schaefer will become Daimler's chief operating officer. He is currently the management board member for research.
- Wolf-Dieter Kurz will take on responsibility for product strategy and steering at Mercedes-Benz Cars. He is currently responsible for the business cases of product projects.
- Kurz
- Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius will take over responsibility for Mercedes Vans from Wilfried Porth, who retains his role as head of human resources. Porth will focus on personnel restructuring measures.
- Kallenius will
- Wilfried
- Porth
- Porth
Mercedes-Benz Chief Financial Officer Frank Lindenberg will leave Daimler and hand his responsibilities to Daimler's Chief Financial Officer Harald Wilhelm.
The changes take effect on April 1, Daimler said in a news release on Thursday.
Daimler is the world’s best-selling premium automaker and largest producer of commercial vehicles. It suffered a steep decline in profit last year that forced the company to slash the dividend to the lowest level since the financial crisis.
At the vans unit, a relatively small part of the business, earnings before interest and taxes swung to a negative 3.1 billion euros ($3.35 billion) in 2019.
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After three profit warnings in less than a year as CEO, Kallenius last week promised to deliver on significantly higher margins and said he will consider selling assets to channel more money into automaking.
Bloomberg contributed to this report
