Loscher wanted to resign his office with a daily schedule. He is leaving the executive board "by mutual agreement," siemens explained. Kaeser now has one goal above all: after the stormy events of the past few days, he wants to smooth the waters at siemens again.
Kaeser now has to get to grips with the many problems at siemens very quickly. After his appointment as the new CEO, he said: "our company is certainly not in a crisis, nor is it in need of restructuring. But lately we've been too preoccupied with ourselves and lost some of the momentum we had against the competition."His declared goal now is to lead siemens back into calm waters "and to form a high-performance team".
At a press conference called at short notice, kaeser appealed above all for the trust of employees. "It is not an entrepreneurial achievement to destroy as many jobs as possible," kaeser explained. "People and margins" had to be kept in mind at the same time. "What comes before and after is not so important," said kaeser.
Loscher thanked his supporters in a personal statement after his enforced departure. In addition to the siemens family, he included the members of the supervisory board, who have not only supported him since he took office, "but also in the past few months in particular, and who have spoken to me in several instances expressing their desire for me to remain at the helm of the company," the manager wrote. However, he had come to the conclusion that a basis of trust for his work "no longer existed."
The change in leadership was considered a foregone conclusion after the majority of the supervisory boards of the employer and employee representatives had already agreed on the personnel changes last weekend. Loscher has repeatedly had to contend with mishaps such as the delayed delivery of ICE trains to deutsche bahn and delays in the connection of offshore wind farms. Last thursday, the 55-year-old austrian came under massive pressure as a result of the second profit warning in less than three months.
Siemens' performance in the third quarter was also mixed. Although orders rose sharply between april and june compared to the same period last year, sales and operating profit declined. Because siemens recently got rid of its stake in the unloved subsidiary nokia siemens networks (NSN) and the now independent former lighting subsidiary osram threw off some money, the bottom line was a 43 percent increase in profits to 1.1 billion euros, siemens announced.
The employee bank on the siemens supervisory board demanded a commitment to co-determination from kaeser. "Employees, the works council and IG metall expect a clear commitment to valid agreements and that constructive cooperation will continue," declared IG metall head and siemens supervisory board vice chairman berthold huber. "An innovative group with highly qualified employees and profits in the billions offers a good basis for this."
The employee representatives also demanded an end to the personnel disputes. "It's not about individuals and interests, but about the well-being of the group and its employees and a long-term and creative corporate perspective," jurgen kerner, who also sits on the siemens supervisory board for IG metall, told the dpa news agency in Munich.