Daimler investors push for independent chairman as Zetsche bows out

FRANKFURT: Investors welcomed former Daimler chief executive Dieter Zetsche’s decision to forego his role as chairman of the German carmaker, announced at the weekend and starting a race to find an independent head of the company’s supervisory board.

Zetsche, 67, a former head of the Mercedes-Benz brand, was due to take a seat as chairman of the board of directors at the Stuttgart-based company after a two-year cooling off period.

In a surprise move, he announced in an interview in Sunday newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that he would renounce his position, breaking a decades-old practice among German companies of promoting board members to directors.

Now Manfred Bischoff, Daimler’s current chairman needs to find a new successor candidate before he retires on March 31, 2021.

“This enables Daimler to reorient itself under new management, a step which from our point of view is necessary,” Michael Muders, a fund manager at Germany’s Union Investment, told Reuters.

Ingo Speich, head of sustainability and corporate governance at Deka Investment, said that given the unresolved questions about Daimler’s involvement in a diesel emissions scandal, “the new chairman or chairwoman should be free from conflicts of interest”.

Daimler agreed to pay $2.2 billion to resolve a US government diesel emissions investigation and claims from 250,000 US vehicle owners earlier this month.—Reuters