The departure of an important division head is causing further unrest at Thyssenkrupp. The group confirmed on Tuesday that the head of the materials trading company Materials Services, Martin Stillger, will be resigning from his post at the end of the month. The manager will leave Thyssenkrupp of his own accord. The group regrets the decision. IG Metall suspected a different background. “We are assuming that there is a personnel change that was obviously pushed by CEO Miguel Lopez,” said IG Metall’s corporate advisor and deputy chairman of the supervisory board at Materials Services, Ingo Klötzer. Materials Services is successful, Klötzer stressed. From a business perspective, there is no reason for a separation. Different ideas about the future of the company may have led to the separation. “CEO Lopez obviously has expectations that cannot be fulfilled in the current market situation,” said the union representative.
Thyssenkrupp initially did not want to comment on these statements and referred to its own press release. Materials Services is one of the Ruhr Group’s top-selling businesses. The company supplies raw materials, steel and plastics, among other things, to around 250,000 customers worldwide. In the 2022/23 financial year, the approximately 16,000 employees generated sales of 13.6 billion euros. Thyssenkrupp announced that Stillger’s successor would soon be decided in the relevant committees. IG Metall warned the group’s management against enforcing the decision in the supervisory board again with the chairman’s double vote. Last week, the control body of the entire group had used this method to push through the sale of 20 percent of the shares in the steel subsidiary Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe to the energy holding company of the Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský against the votes of the employee bank.