Uniper chief to step down after German government bailout
Gas importer last year posted one of the biggest losses in corporate history
The stricken gas importer Uniper has announced the departure of its chief executive Klaus-Dieter Maubach, the biggest casualty of a management shake-up after a multibillion-euro bailout of the company by the German government.
Maubach, who has served as chief since 2021, said it was “the right time to clear the way for a new management board team” as the energy company grapples with the fallout from Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The company said Maubach would continue in his role until a replacement was appointed some time this year.
Uniper, once Europe’s largest importer of Russian gas, reported a €40bn loss for the first nine months of 2022, one of the biggest in corporate history.
Fearing that a collapse in the company would send shockwaves through the economy, the German government agreed to buy Uniper from the Finnish energy group Fortum in a bailout set to cost as much as €51bn.
Maubach was as recently as May last year defending Gazprom as a reliable supplier of gas to Europe. But his company began to lose tens of millions of euros a day after the Russian state-owned gas exporter drastically reduced supplies to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in mid-June.
“That, in hindsight, maybe it was even a mistake to think that gas would not be used,” he said in an interview with CNBC in September. “Maybe it was just wishful thinking.”