Status: 04/24/2023 4:25 p.m
Thyssenkrupp boss Martina Merz has announced her retirement. The shares of the industrial group then crashed. The successor at the top of the executive board is to drive forward plans for restructuring the company.
The CEO of Thyssenkrupp, Martina Merz, surprisingly leaves the company. Thyssenkrupp announced that Miguel Ángel López Borrego, who currently runs the auto parts supplier Norma, is to follow her on June 1. López Borrego was previously head of Siemens Spain and chairman of the supervisory board at Siemens Gamesa.
Merz has been the head of the steel and industrial group since October 2019 and is the first woman to hold this position. She sold the profitable elevator division and cut several thousand jobs. Her contract was only extended in spring 2022 until the end of March 2028. The former Bosch manager had recently come under pressure from shareholders and the powerful employee representatives. Your plans to spin off the steel division met with opposition. The planned partial IPO of the hydrogen subsidiary Nucera is still a long time coming.
“In the interest of the company”
Merz explained that under her leadership there were “significant strategic decisions”. There are “promising talks with possible partners” for the sale of the steel division. Currently, “financial expertise and the further improvement of performance are in the foreground”, so “additional commercial skills are certainly useful”, said the outgoing Thyssenkrupp boss. She wants to “open the way in the interest of the company” for this focus.
The head of the Thyssenkrupp Supervisory Board, Siegfried Russwurm, also a Siemens manager for many years, praised the future CEO López Borrego as an international manager with broad industrial experience in the areas of digitization and Industry 4.0 and as an experienced financial expert. “With him at the helm, we will continue on the path of transformation based on the strategic lines that have been developed.” The restructuring of Thyssenkrupp is not yet complete.
Share eleven percent in the red
Investors reacted very irritated to the news on the stock exchange. The Thyssenkrupp share lost more than eleven percent by the afternoon and was at the bottom of the MDAX index for medium-sized companies.