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Germany: Lidl is reorganising and streamlining its board of directors

Discount Retail Chain LIDL's chairman of the board Kenneth McGrath has now completed the restructuring of the board structure. From 1 July 2024, there will be a new board department with changed responsibilities and also new faces. The goal is obviously to make responsibilities clearer and more structured in order to be able to act even faster and more effectively in the future. Already in the last few months and last year, some managers have already left more or less voluntarily, so that currently no one has had to leave their post. The last to leave was the Chief Human Resources Officer Mr. Andre' Becker in May of this year. There is also a lot going on abroad. In the course of the restructuring, four country heads will move to the headquarters in Neckarsulm, where they will work as divisional board members. This concerns Jeno' Grosz, Lidl Hungary, Matus' Gala, Lidl Belgium, Alessandro Wolf, Lidl Austria and Marco Giudici, Lidl Romania. As a result, these four successful national companies will receive new CEOs. The structure abroad is now also to be streamlined in order to achieve the goals better and with more speed.


New board member comes from BMW

The newly created "Customer" department will now be taken over by former BMW manager Jens Thiemer. All areas of marketing and sales that lie at the interface with the customer are now bundled here. Originally, it had been announced that Thiemer would take over the new board department for customers as early as January 1. The change had obviously already approved this last November, but had been postponed somewhat by the creation of the new department. Thiemer had previously headed the Customer, Brand and Digital divisions at BMW and is now to strengthen LIDL more, especially in these areas.


In addition to Christian Härtnagel, Peter de Roos is also one of the divisional board members at Thiemer. LIDL's priority here is to be even closer to its customers and to develop more from a conventional brand to a relationship brand. Thiemer is also responsible for the presentation of the product ranges and the layout of the stores. The Schwarz service, which provides the central services for LIDL, Kaufland and Co., will also be leaner. Managing Director Holger Krieger for Accounting is leaving the company by mutual agreement. His successor is now Antonio Rupcic, who reports directly to the responsible board member Christiane Milders.


In the future, LIDL purchasing will concentrate on the core functions

Due to the new creation of the "Customer" department with a major restructuring of the structures in other departments as well, everything took a little longer than planned last year. For example, board member Christoph Pohl, who continues to head purchasing, had to hand over areas such as marketing and market research to Thiemer. Jörg Siegel, who was previously responsible for the group's procurement as a divisional board member, and Gregor Schwarz as Managing Director of Schwarz Mobility Solutions, who was responsible for the purchase of company cars, were also replaced.


In the future, responsibility for the states will be combined in one instead of two board departments. The management of this important area will be in the hands of board member Georg Kröll from 1 July. Maksymilian Braniecki, who was previously responsible for some of the countries on the Executive Board, will take over as Head of Human Resources from September in order to be able to react better in view of the increasing shortage of skilled workers.


The logistics department, which is headed by the former Lidl Germany boss Matthias Oppitz, will also be upgraded. There, the online and branch business are to be more closely networked along the entire supply chain. The restructuring of the board of directors is now intended to lead to a further increase in efficiency at LIDL in order to be able to identify trends more quickly in order to make decisions more effectively. The fact is that LIDL is constantly putting itself to the test and is thus constantly developing.



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