Thyssen-Krupp finds no boss - and could lose more top talent - http://bit.ly/2NGUfrM
No CEO, no chairman of the supervisory board: There has been a vacuum at Thyssen-Krupp for two months - and gradually also a panic. The competition is already recruiting top talent.
Dusseldorf, Frankfurt The meeting was long and uncomfortable. When the members of the Thyssen-Krupp Supervisory Board arrived at Essen headquarters on Tuesday to discuss the future, each of them is aware of the seriousness of the situation .
For CEO Heinrich Hiesinger had thrown in July, middle of the same month Ulrich Lehner no longer wanted to be supervisory board chief. Within ten days, the billionaire company had lost its two main executives .
The remaining overseers met on Tuesday for the first regular meeting without Lehner. René Obermann was missing. The former boss of the German Telekom wanted to go originally, if a successor for Lehner is found. But it happens differently. On the website of the supervisory board there are only two letters instead of Obermann's name: NN
The group is panicking. Was it still in August, the search for a new chairman of the Supervisory Board run smoothly and orderly, the project now resembles a fuss . Vorweg: the economics professor Bernhard Pellens. He is chairman of the Nomination Committee and has been assisted by the renowned recruitment consultancy Spencer Stuart. Both have nothing to show.
Cancellations came from Airbus CEO Tom Enders , the former Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers and the former CEO of Deutsche Bank , Marcus Schenck. Also, the CEO of Volvo , Håkan Samuelsson, should have been addressed unsuccessfully. In Essen there are still half a dozen other names circulating - all with the same addition: do not want to.
Industrial Group: Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Thyssen-Krupp - the job nobody wants
INDUSTRIAL
Group Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Thyssen-Krupp - the job nobody wants
The Supervisory Board meeting on Tuesday was therefore frosty. Embarrassing was the hanging party, participants criticized. Unworthy of a company of this size and tradition . Worse, she is also economically unhealthy.
Thyssen-Krupp is in the middle of remodeling . The merger of the steel division with the Indian competitor Tata hooks. Hiesinger had enforced the major project after many problems, now he is gone. The Indians ask who is the contact person for the many points that are still open. There are hardly any answers from Essen.
There is also much to do elsewhere in the Group. The plant engineering division is the biggest problem child. There, the management was dismissed. Who should hire a new one?
While the supervisory board does not even find its own boss, the board of directors is provisionally led by the CFO Guido Kerkhoff. But everyone in the business knows that Kerkhoff's decisions are all subject to change.
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It threatens a brain drain - an outflow of knowledge. Top performers of the third and fourth level, report Konzerninsider, have already jumped or were close to it. Competitors find it easy to recruit Thyssen managers as long as Essen has a total vacuum of leadership and strategy.
"This is a real dilemma," says a corporate observer. Normally, the search for a supervisory board chief could take half a year. "But Thyssen does not have that time." And every rejection of a candidate makes matters more difficult.