“To suffer”
With luck- and hapless Susan Docherty cleaning out her desk in Europe, GM needs someone else to lead Chevrolet in Europe. They found Thomas Sedran, who will take the helm at Chevrolet’s EU HQ in Zurich, Switzerland. Sedran will start in July, says Reuters, while Docherty will be leaving GM in September.
Sedran needs no formal introduction here at TTAC. He infamously served as the interim-interim CEO of GM’s Opel, a job he received last July, when he replaced interim CEO Stephen Girsky, who replaced the comparatively longer-serving CEO Karl-Friedrich Stracke.
While battlefield-promoted Sedran was manning the ramparts in Rüsselsheim, GM could look for a real CEO of Opel. He was found in the former Volkswagen exec Karl-Thomas Neumann.
Sedran currently holds the strategy portfolio in Opel’s board. “Strategy” slots are – at least among European automakers – often either parking positions, or camouflage titles for other work.
We shall leave an overview of Chevy’s situation in Europe to the much cooler heads at Reuters, who wrote:
“Chevy, which imports cars to Europe almost exclusively from GM’s South Korean unit, has lost ground to low-cost rivals Hyundai Motor Co and Kia Motors Corp.
While Chevrolet’s market share in Europe dropped to 1.1 percent during the first five months of this year from the average 1.3 percent when Docherty took over at the start of 2012, Korean budget brands Hyundai and Kia grew theirs by roughly half a percentage point each, to 3.5 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively.
Cadillac sold fewer than 500 cars in western and central Europe last year out of the roughly 196,000 Cadillacs sold worldwide.”
As head of Chevrolet Europe, Sedran takes charge of a suicide mission. The EU market is in disarray, old brands fight for survival, new brands are in daily peril of being trampled. What’s more, Sedran has – except for his short-lived stand-in stint – no experience in running a brand, or a carmaker. His expertise lies in selling off the bones and usable organs of dead companies. Sedran came to GM and Opel as an Alix Partner consultant. Alix says they are the industry benchmark when it comes to putting a dollar amount on “a distressed or bankrupt company or its assets.”
“It’s like putting a funeral director in charge of an emergency room,” quipped an executive of a European OEM, when I ran into him in an ill-reputed Berlin bar last night. “But who knows, maybe it’s really the New GM, and they are planning ahead.”
In related news, Opel found a new Marketing Director. It is Tina Müller, previously in charge of Henkel’s Beauty Care cosmetics division for Western Europe.. To ward off snarky comments: Henkel, and especially the beauty care division, are run with more military precision than West Point, and Frau Müller will soon miss it.
“Sedan will start in July, says Reuters”
It’s okay Bertel, you made the typo we are all going to make over the next couple months.
Deck.
Chairs.
Sedran is just, once again, keeping the seat warm while signing the things that need signing. Even I can see that there’s a bigger plan at work here. (Not necessarily a plan that will *work*, but a plan.)
The “plan” may be nothing more than Akerson’s standard “cut your way to profitability” mantra.
I’m just not liking GM’s Game of Thrones. Poor Opel, one more prospective king will never see the throne again!
“In the Game of Thrones, you win, or you die.”
I’d have more faith in Sedran and GM if one of his first acts is to cut overhead expenses by moving European HQ from very expensive Zurich to, say, Antwerp, Barcelona or Prague.
Prague would be apropos. Chevy has a chance (and decent sales) in Eastern Europe. Western Europe: No way.
Does Prague have the necessary luxury hotels with full concierge service long term suites and Michelin rated restaurants? GM can’t expect executives on such an important mission to rough it While Bob King is back home in the UAW-owned luxury golf resort.
You’re aware that Prague is very well-developed, right?
There are people on TTAC who don’t know Prague isn’t in Chechnya. Extrapolate from that.
Michelin does not have a guide for the Czech Republic, but there are at least two restaurants in Prague that have one Michelin star and a few others on the Bib Gourmand list.
There are rumours that cheap office space in significant amounts will be free soon. In Bochum. 10 Michelin starred restaurants in a 40 km radius. Antwerp scores 20. Zurich only 18. Joker: 10+ flights daily to Paris (Thalys doesn’t count, Belgium). Zurich wins.
Europe. Hmmm… GM 8% share in a shrinking/stagnant market. Chevvy a dying brand. Or as we say here in the states: “ray no”. One has to wonder just how much is really for sale.