Volvo Deputy CEO and Chief Commercial Officer Bjorn Annwall will leave the automaker this month.
The departure of the longest serving member of the automaker's top-tier executive management team (EMT) comes as Volvo aims to "increase simplicity, speed and collaboration and reduce complexity by flattening our structure in the commercial part of the business," the company said Oct. 9.
Annwall is responsible for the company’s commercial activities across five regions, 33 national sales companies and 57 importers as well as key commercial functions such as the car service business, financial services, customer care and commercial digital.
Volvo will not refill the roles of deputy CEO or chief commercial officer, a spokesperson said.
That means the moves will leave the automaker's top board without a traditional sales chief as commercial responsibilities will be split among multiple executives.
- Chief Product and Strategy Officer and EMT member Erik Severinson will add commercial strategy to his list of duties, which also include product strategy, program management, sustainability, digital, quality and energy business.
- Oscar Bertilsson Olsborg, will join Volvo second executive tier, the group management team (GMT) as head of global commercial operations. In addition to retailer and service development, Olsborg, who has worked for Volvo for nearly 24 years, he will be responsible for commercial digital.
- Volvo Europe boss and GMT member Arek Nowinski will become president of international markets, which means that the heads of Volvo's business units in the U.S. and Canada, Asia-Pacific and Latin America will report to him instead of Annwall.
- Global marketing boss and GMT member Gretchen Saegh-Fleming will add customer experience to her responsibilities, which will include brand, customer care and customer experience insights and analytics, the automaker said.
All the changes take effect on Nov. 1
Major unheaval
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Annwall's area of the business has undergone major changes this year. In the first quarter, Volvo said it was giving up on its goal of getting half of all its global sales through online channels by 2025. Last month another key retail program was scrapped when Volvo said it would quit the car subscriptions business.
Since arriving at Volvo from McKinsey & Co. in 2015, Annwall, 49, has had important roles at the company. In April 2021 he was named Volvo chief financial officer. As CFO he played a key role in the automaker's stock exchange listing in October of that year.
Annwall was appointed to his current role roughly three months after Jim Rowan took over as CEO in March 2022.
Annwall is the the second deputy CEO to leave Volvo this year. Javier Varela, who was also COO, left the company in May. He now works for Rivian.
