Continental’s supervisory board has extended the 52-year-old’s contract by a further five years.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf The Continental Supervisory Board has extended the contract of CEO Nikolai Setzer by five years. This became known on Thursday in the run-up to the virtual general meeting of the Dax group. The CEO’s current contract would have expired in 2024.
“Nikolai Setzer enjoys our complete trust. Over the past three years, he has successfully initiated and consistently driven forward the transformation of Continental. He will lead the company into a successful future,” said the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Wolfgang Reitzle.
In the course of this, the committee appointed a new board member for Conti’s most important business segment. Philipp von Hirschheydt, currently head of the display business, will take over responsibility for the so-called automotive area from May.
There Continental bundles its future business with car components, car software and sensors. The post had been vacant for more than two years, and the area of responsibility most recently belonged to Setzer. Von Hirschheydt is a close confidant of the Conti boss. In 2018 he was responsible for the tire replacement business when Setzer was on the board.
“After Setzer strategically repositioned the automotive business in an extremely difficult environment with a market and customer-oriented structure, he is now handing over responsibility to von Hirschheydt,” says a company statement.
The 48-year-old will assume a central position, as CEO Setzer ties the long-term success of the entire group to this division. They are the basis for the medium-term goal of a profit margin of eight to eleven percent “improved results in the automotive sector,” says the Conti boss, according to the text of the speech at the AGM, which has since been interrupted due to technical problems.
So far, Conti has not managed to bring the division into the profit zone in the long term. Last year, the automotive business wrote a loss of 0.2 percent. The problem is high expenditure in this area, since the development of hardware and software for automated driving requires high investments.
Setzer set the direction for von Hirschheydt at the AGM. According to the Conti boss, Conti wants to focus on the automotive sector. “In research and development. Here, too, we want to become even more efficient,” he says.
A further step in this direction could be a partnership with the US robot car company Aurora, which Conti announced in the run-up to the annual general meeting. Together they will develop automated truck systems, Conti supplies Aurora with high-performance computers and sensors, among other things.
Management board grows from five to seven people
As announced, shareholders will have to make do with a lower dividend of EUR 1.50 per share this year. Setzer justifies this with negative special effects and the declining share price development.
Setzer’s wide range of tasks also caused criticism from shareholders and within the group. Group management, the automotive business and compliance have so far been with the 52-year-old. The board of directors now relieves Setzer. Olaf Schick joins the Conti board of directors along with von Hirschheydt. The former Mercedes manager will be responsible for compliance from May. The Continental Executive Board will then grow from five to seven people, including two women.
The supervisory body around chief supervisor Reitzle will be addressed at the virtual general meeting, above all by the shareholder protectors. Deka, the German Association for the Protection of Securities (DSW) and Union Investment refuse to discharge the supervisory board.
According to Deka, it is still unclear what role Reitzle will play in dealing with the diesel scandal. DSW sees failures in compliance, which became clear through the known manipulation of air conditioning and industrial hoses. To make matters worse, Continental had to admit at the end of last year that around 40 terabytes of data could be stolen in a cyber attack that it initially thought had been averted.
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