Nick Reilly will head the Opel management team as CEO and take on responsibility for all Opel/Vauxhall activities worldwide, the company announced on Friday.
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The shuffle saw Opel managing director Hans Demant, who was also vice president of engineering for GM Europe, move to a new GM role as vice president, global intellectual property rights, reporting to Tom Stephens, head of GM’s global product operations in Detroit.
“In the fast moving global automotive industry where alliances and cooperation between manufacturers are becoming more common, the value and treatment of intellectual property is critical,” Stephens said in a statement.
Other changes announced after a meeting of the supervisory board today included Rita Forst taking responsiblity for engineeringm reporting to Reilly. Forst has been executive director, vehicle systems and integration at the international technical development centre at Opel in Rüsselsheim.
Mark James was named new chief financial officer. He has been at GM since 1991 and was most recently vice president and CFO of GM Daewoo Auto & Technology in Korea where he worked with Reilly, himself a seasoned GM senior executive whose past roles included heading Vauxhall here in the UK.
“Today’s appointments represent another important building block for Opel’s successful future”, said Opel supervisory board chairman Walter Borst. “The new leadership team has the full support of the board. We are looking forward to a good and constructive cooperation with Nick Reilly and his team as our common objective is to move forward the Opel brand.”
Reilly said his new leadership team would “address our tasks quickly and with plenty of energy. With our Insignia, the Astra, the new Meriva and several other upcoming new products, we in particular will be on the offensive and will want to increase our market share in Europe. Our recent product and sales successes are motivating and reassuring at the same time.”
Separately Opel said much of its 25,000 German staff would be affected by production cuts to the end of February as the company adjusts output to meet demand.
“About 12,000 workers in all four German plants will be affected in some way, either through one of three shifts being temporarily eliminated during a working day or even the entire production for that day itself,” a spokesman said.
“We draft our production plans month for month and plant for plant in order to react flexibly to fluctuations in new orders. The one thing we won’t do is tie up capital by manufacturing cars for the stockpile,” he added.
