Stuttgart There is a change at the top at the mechanical engineering company Dürr: The long-time boss Ralf Dieter, 60, is handing over his position to his deputy Jochen Weyrauch, 55, at the end of the year. Internally, this is no surprise: Weyrauch was recently already taking care of the core business, while Dieter took care of the wood processing machine subsidiary Homag in the Black Forest.
Immediately after the announcement of the change in boss on Wednesday, Dürr shares fell only a little. On Thursday, however, it was more than six percent in the red. Because with Dieter, an era also comes to an end at the world market leader for painting robots.
For 16 years, the economist led the company with a great passion and expertise for digitization. The largest shareholder with a share of 29 percent is still the family of ex-Bahn boss Heinz Dürr through a foundation. The company has been listed on the stock exchange since 1990. At that time, Patriarch Dürr found Dieter just in time to get his ailing family business back on track.
The then boss and current chairman of the supervisory board of Volkswagen, Hans Dieter Pötsch, had overwhelmed the family company with an expansion course and brought it into distress. Declining orders, especially from the automotive industry, resulted in a liquidity bottleneck. Uninvited hedge funds were interested in the industrial pearl, Commerzbank flirted with the passing on of the loans. Dieter parted with parts of the company.
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In order not to get bogged down in the beginning, he concentrated fully on the core business with the auto industry. He bravely invested in the Chinese market. The calculation worked: 1.4 billion euros in sales with a loss of more than 100 million euros will probably be between 3.6 and 3.8 billion euros in sales this year with an expected profit of between 70 and 120 million euros.
The pre-Corona level has not yet been reached, but the race to catch up is in full swing in Dieter’s farewell year. In the past five years he has further diversified the company – among other things in the direction of wood processing, application technology, exhaust air technology, battery technology and medical technology. Digital competence was also purchased.
Not only Dieter is proud of his own achievement, the supervisory board also regretted the decision of the long-standing CEO, whose contract would have run for another two years. The company’s development appears in an even brighter light when one takes into account that in the meantime, the largest competitor, Eisenmann, could no longer keep up with the competition and went bankrupt. The Böblingen-based company initially put Dürr under heavy pressure with dumping prices, but made gigantic losses.
Weyrauch is considered an ideal internal successor
Dieter has known his successor for a long time. “It was important to me that what I was allowed to build up over the past 16 years should also be further developed and managed,” Dieter told the Handelsblatt. After all, he is also a Dürr shareholder, “if only with a modest stake of 0.3 percent”.
The industrial engineer Weyrauch has been a member of the board since 2017. When Dieter was still head of the troubled Dürr subsidiary Carl Schenck AG in 2005, Weyrauch was also on the board of the balancing and diagnostic specialist. He started his entrepreneurial career at the automotive supplier Continental Teves; later he went to Turbo-Luft-Technik, which belongs to the plant manufacturer Babcock Borsig.
Dürr Supervisory Board Chairman Gerhard Federer also sees the manager as an ideal internal successor. Weyrauch receives a five-year contract. After Dieter resigns, only Dietmar Heinrich, 57, will continue to be a member of the Dürr AG Board of Management “until further notice” as Chief Financial Officer. In the opinion of a well-informed consultant, a change of office has seldom been as harmonious as it is now at Dürr.
Dieter will continue to advise Dürr on digitization issues in the future. But the passionate tennis player is already looking forward to new tasks: “I will be active alone and with partners as an investor, especially in mechanical engineering,” he told the Handelsblatt. There are many companies with difficulties in digital transformation that he can help with with his experience. His focus is on companies that can also transform into electromobility.
“I am still fully employed at Dürr until the end of the year and will only deal more intensively with possible investments from the beginning of the year. In a few months I may be able to say more about it, ”announced Dieter.
More: The Dürr boss expects growth again after the corona kink