Porsche appoints new Chief Financial Officer and Chief Sales Officer
In both cases, this is an internal appointment, as both the new CFO and the CSO were previously active in the car manufacturer’s top management – and both are considered close confidants of CEO Oliver Blume. Breckner was previously Head of the General Secretariat and Corporate Development at Porsche. Becker was most recently Head of the Overseas and Growth Markets region at Porsche AG and “has successfully developed it into one of Porsche’s strong sales pillars,” says Porsche.
“We are very pleased to have found two excellent successors from within the ranks of Porsche. Together with them, we will continue to write the unique success story of our company,” says Dr. Wolfgang Porsche, Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
However, very few people in the industry believe this is a “long-term personnel development,” as the company states in the press release. The Supervisory Board’s move at the beginning of February was too unusual. It had announced that Wolfgang Porsche would hold talks with Meschke and von Platen about an “amicable early termination of [their] appointment as members of the Executive Board of Porsche.” In the case of a long-planned generational change, the company could have followed usual procedures and waited for the contracts to expire – and not negotiated a contract cancellation within three and a half weeks.
Sales Director von Platen was apparently blamed internally for the weak sales in China and for not having reacted to the market development there early enough, impacting overall sales and production. As a result, Meschke failed to achieve the self-imposed return targets and is also said to have had his eyes too openly on the position held by Oliver Blume, who spends a lot of time in Wolfsburg in his dual role at Volkswagen and Porsche.
Nevertheless, Wolfgang Porsche thanked the two departing board members. “We would like to thank Lutz Meschke for his great commitment and his many years of successful work for Porsche AG. He has decisively shaped the positive development of this company with a high level of commitment and strategic foresight and he resolutely drove the IPO,” said Porsche. “I would also like to thank Detlev von Platen on behalf of the Supervisory Board. His many years of strong commitment have shaped Porsche. His commitment to the development of global markets is particularly noteworthy.” Meschke joined Porsche in 2001 from Hugo Boss, while von Platen had been with the brand since 1997.
The new CFO Jochen Breckner has also been with Porsche for a similar amount of time: he first joined in 2000 as a trainee and graduate, and later as a doctoral student. Breckner, who holds a doctorate in business administration and was born in Stuttgart, became Assistant to the Chairman of the Executive Board in 2008. After holding other positions in Controlling, he returned to the Board of Management office in 2018, this time as Head of the General Secretariat and Corporate Development. Breckner’s successor will be Christian Pantel, who is responsible for a model series in his current role at Porsche.
Matthias Becker, on the other hand, has ‘only’ been with Porsche since 2015, but previously held various positions and markets for the VW Group, including various senior sales roles in Europe and China for Audi. As Head of the Overseas and Growth Markets region at Porsche, he has been responsible for more than 70 individual markets such as South East Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Africa and Central and South America.
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