MERCEDES-BENZ

New CEO of German automotive giant already facing strong opposition

After thirty days after the arrival of Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius (in the photo above), she does not have to face only the skepticism of being the first "boss" of the German giant who was not born in Germany.
It will not be easy for any manager to reach the dream chair and in the first month of management have to deal with German authorities' accusations of cartelization, collect thousands of vehicles due to irregularities in emissions and have to announce that the company has not yet has reached the middle of the fiscal year and has already made two revisions of the forecast of results (the third in less than 12 months), always low.
To deepen the issue, Ola Kallenius will have to implement a huge cost-cutting plan that investors are still unaware of and begin to show some nervousness about the lack of news on the subject.
The departure of Dieter Zetsche and CFO, Bodo Uebber, brought some uneasiness to the shareholder structure of Daimler, on the one hand happy for their departure because of a history of errors and unfulfilled promises - the three downgrades of Daimler's results are the proof of this - on the other concerned with the future and the lack of information on the designs of Ola Kallenius.
This uneasiness was apparent last Monday when Daimler's shares sank 5% in the stock market, recovering marginally throughout the day. That is, Daimler lost value, and the company did not help anything by bluntly justifying that the downward revision did not mean loss of profits, but rather to match the performance of the previous fiscal year. He forgot to Daimler that the forecast for this fiscal year announced a slight increase of the profits and dividends.
For all that, the giant has been shaking its shareholder structure worried about the future, clearly adding to the ordeal whereby Ola Kallenius and new CFO Harald Wilheim will pass. Moreover, the new CEO of Daimler will not enjoy the so-called "state of grace" because bad news has happened one after another. Especially the legal cases in which Daimler is involved, namely, those mentioned above.
If Ola Kallenius has nothing under the hat to offer - for example, spin off the heavyweight division - investor confidence capital is already exhausted after 30 days at the helm of the German giant. What, then, can the 50-year-old Swedish manager do?
Well, first of all you have to avoid, at all costs, a new review of Daimler's financial goals for the next year and even less within this fiscal year, that would be the end of the line for Kallenius, since confidence in his leadership would be doomed . Then quickly introduce Daimler's expense containment plan. To say that it will be an ambitious plan is not enough for investors, who are increasingly apprehensive about the situation.
Parallel to these two situations, Ola Kallenius must pay attention to what is happening in the VW group which, as Automais has already revealed, is making a public sale offer for the truck division, Traton. If it is a huge success, Daimler's CEO will be able to look at its heavy-duty division, recover some capital and, above all, gain confidence with investors. But this option has a risk.
Changing strategy suddenly could have the opposite effect and indicate that the CEO was cornered and had no more solutions. So the task is not as simple as it sounds.
Ola Kallenius came to Daimler in a fanfare and had an action that earned the respect of investors: the salaries of the entire administration were linked to the goal of putting the entire Mercedes fleet on the road to zero emissions in 2039, thus leading everyone to strive for the achieve this goal. But it was sun of little hard and now we will see what strain is made this swedish who hit the dream chair, probably at the wrong time. José Manuel Costa, de Portugal