Porsche boss Müller appointed CEO of the Volkswagen Group; also remains Chairman of Porsche AG until a successor is found
25 September 2015
At its meeting in Wolfsburg today, the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG appointed Matthias Müller, currently Chairman of Porsche, the new CEO of Volkswagen AG with immediate effect. (Porsche is a Volkswagen Group company.)
Former CEO Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn resigned on Wednesday in light of the Volkswagen diesel emissions testing scandal. (Earlier post.) Müller will continue as Chairman of Porsche until a successor has been found.
My most urgent task is to win back trust for the Volkswagen Group—by leaving no stone unturned and with maximum transparency, as well as drawing the right conclusions from the current situation. Under my leadership, Volkswagen will do everything it can to develop and implement the most stringent compliance and governance standards in our industry. If we manage to achieve that then the Volkswagen Group with its innovative strength, its strong brands and above all its competent and highly motivated team has the opportunity to emerge from this crisis stronger than before.
—Matthias Müller
Matthias Müller was born in Chemnitz (Saxony) on June 9, 1953. He completed his high school education in Ingolstadt followed by an apprenticeship as a toolmaker with Audi AG. He then studied computer science at Munich University of Applied Sciences. After obtaining his master’s degree in computer science, Müller resumed his career with Audi AG in Ingolstadt in 1978, becoming Head of the Systems Analysis Division in 1984 and Head of Project Management for the Audi A3 in 1993. He assumed responsibility for Product Management at Audi AG, SEAT and Lamborghini in 1995.
Müller moved to Wolfsburg as Head of Product Management of the Volkswagen Group and the Volkswagen brand in 2007 and also became a General Representative of the Volkswagen Group. He has been Chairman of the Executive Board of Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG and a member of the Executive Board of Porsche Automobil Holding SE since 2010. In his function as Chairman of the Executive Board of Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Müller was appointed member of the Board of Management of Volkswagen AG effective 1 March 2015.
Matthias Müller’s current contract as a Board member of Volkswagen AG will continue to apply in his new function as CEO. This contract runs until the end of February 2020.
He certainly sounds like a talented guy.
He managed to be there all those years and avoid finding out how the cars that he developed worked, or that there was any problem!
I was hoping that they might go for Sepp Blatter personally, as he is free and certainly knows a thing or two about corruption, but perhaps he has nothing to teach the guys at VW and their fragrant new boss.
Posted by: Davemart | 25 September 2015 at 11:36 AM
It is good that VW solved the imperative CEO change so fast so that they do not also have to spend time on a power struggle when there is so much else VW needs to do ASAP. The new CEO as former head of Porsche is not implicated in the VW fraud that affects 1.2 and 1.6 and 2.0 litre engines but not the 3.0 litre engine that Porsche uses. That is a big plus of cause. If you have been head of a brand that has cheated you have zero credibility in most peoples eyes and then you must quit. I also very much like that he has a computer science background. Software will define the future of the auto industry with self-driving cars being the focus of all mayor efforts in the coming years. He gets a hell of a job so to speak. It is not going to be easy for sure.
Posted by: Account Deleted | 25 September 2015 at 11:57 AM
Davemart, Thanks for the laugh! But seriously, I hope it's not that morose. I think Henrik has made some good points and the Porsche brand and results have certainly been good.
Posted by: DaveD | 25 September 2015 at 01:08 PM
'Müller returned to Audi, taking a junior managers position in the IT department in 1984. After joining the planning department from 1993 Müller was product manager for the Audi A3, and from 1995 he was given overall responsibility for product management at Audi.[2]
A year after Martin Winterkorn took over management at Audi, in 2002 Müller was appointed coordinator of Audi and Lamborghini model lines. After Winterkorn was appointed VW Group boss in 2007, he appointed Müller as general representative, and then head of VW's product strategy, controlling all VW group brands.[3]
In October 2010, he was appointed as CEO (head of the Vorstand) of Porsche AG.[3] At the end of February 2014, he became the chief information officer of Porsche Automobil Holding SE.[4]
On 25 September 2015, he was appointed as CEO of Volkswagen AG following the VW emissions scandal that led to the resignation of his predecessor Martin Winterkorn.[5]' (wiki)
He was up to his armpits in it in the relevant period, and the Audi A3 which he developed used the 2 litre diesel.
He should have known exactly what it was likely to be able to do and what not to do.
Posted by: Davemart | 25 September 2015 at 01:36 PM
He was no longer head of Audi in 2007 and the cheating started in 2009. He has not been head of any of the cheating brands since 2009. There are probably just a hundred or so of VW's nearly 600,000 employees that are implicated and that should be bought to justice by a criminal investigation for participation in indirect but deliberate mass murder which is how serious this enormous pollution scandal is (those 11 million cheating cars could pollute as much as 440 million legal diesel cars so no doubt this is mass murder on a grand scale). However, by far the majority of VW's employees are good people that in a sense also have become victims of this horror. VW's sales will drop 10 of thousands will loose their jobs for sure. Muller could be implicated later but right now I do not think he has been close enough to the matter to suspect with any reasonably degree of certainty that he knew about it.
Posted by: Account Deleted | 25 September 2015 at 02:41 PM