BREAKING: Volkswagen Group of America CEO Michael Horn Resigns

by Steph Willems

Published: March 9th, 2016

breaking volkswagen group of america ceo michael horn resigns

Volkswagen’s American operation is looking for a new leader.

Michael Horn, president and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, stepped down effective immediately on March 9.

The company stated that Horn departed in mutual agreement with the company, and will be pursuing other opportunities.

Horn’s duties will be taken over on an interim basis by Hinrich J. Woebcken, who was chosen in January to head Volkswagen’s North American Region and serves as chairman of Volkswagen Group of America.

Horn joined Volkswagen AG in 1990 and had headed their U.S. operations since January, 2014. Previously, he served as head of sales for Europe.

In a statement, the company thanked Horn for his contributions to Volkswagen:

“I want personally to say ‘thank you’ to Michael Horn for the great work he has done for the brand and with the dealers in the United States,” said Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen brand. “During his time in the U.S., Michael Horn built up a strong relationship with our national dealer body and showed exemplary leadership during difficult times for the brand,” he added.

In October, Horn testified before a congressional committee investigating Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal. It was there he announced the company would be withdrawing its application for emissions certification for 2016 models powered by 2.0-liter diesel engines.

Volkswagen has yet to reveal a plan to fix the millions of diesel models that left the Volkswagen factory with a built-in “defeat device” designed fool emissions regulators.

In his testimony before Congress, Horn stated that older affected models — possibly numbering more than 300,000 in the U.S. — would not easily be fixed, and would require extensive hardware revisions to bring them into compliance. Without the modifications, the vehicles would suffer from lowered performance and fuel mileage.

Speculation continues to this day as to whether Volkswagen will buy back those older vehicles, rather than spend money on their repair.

#Departure #Diesel #DieselEmissionsScandal #MichaelHorn #NewsletterArticles #Resignation #Volkswagen

Steph Willems

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8 of 47 comments

Corey Lewis on Mar 10, 2016

That photo reminded me of the color scheme at an electronics store (defunct) I used to go into as a kid in a mall (defunct), and play with the PCs they had on display whilst my mom shopped at Bigg's (defunct). I had to look up the name because it's been so long. CompUSA!

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FreedMike on Mar 10, 2016

What a s**t show.

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- Corey Lewis on Mar 10, 2016
  
  We didn't do it! Oh, well we are guilty, but we didn't know! Some people knew, we can't be sure if they did or didn't. Well, we sent a memo but he didn't see it or something. There was a meeting but he was too far away and he said his ear hurt. I quit. I quit! You're fired. I resign. Money!
  
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- FreedMike on Mar 10, 2016
  
  @Corey Lewis Yeah, classic. I survived some of this stuff during my Last Days At Worldcom. They actually stopped paying the guy who watered all the plants in the office, and required employees to bring in their own office supplies. Meanwhile, all those shares they gave out when the stock was trading for $90 with a $45 strike price were worth maybe $10 by the time they laid me off. Ah well, I didn't need that 72 grand... It got so bad that it was rumored that the Bernie Ebbers (yes, that guy) wouldn't go into any other company facilities other than the HQ building out of fear for his personal safety. But the real hilarity didn't ensue until they stopped paying for coffee. As blunders go, that was right up there with Little Bighorn. You can cut benefits, not give out raises, make people work more, and they'll put up with it...but whatever you do, if you don't want your office to look like like the "to the barricades!" scene from Les Miserables, don't take out the f**king coffee. Just don't do it. Your employees WILL lose their s**t, big time.
  
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- Corey Lewis on Mar 10, 2016
  
  @FreedMike I'll have to read up on that company, I don't think I've heard of it before. That situation sounds pretty shite though.
  
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- Corey Lewis on Mar 10, 2016
  
  @FreedMike My other comment has to be approved because I said a semi-bad word - but I hadn't heard of that particular name, Worldcom. If you had said MCI I would have known. I still dunno the story though, so I'm gonna read up.
  
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- FreedMike on Mar 10, 2016
  
  @Corey Lewis Worldcom bought MCI, where I was working at the time of the merger. MCI was a great company. When the Worldcom merger took place their executives began visiting our facility. The men all had beards (just like Bernie Ebbers) and the women all looked and talked like Tammie Faye Baker. (Favorite line from one of the Worldcom Ladies, in an inimitable Southern Girl drawl: "We have janitors in the headquarters that are millionaires!") It was all done with stock maniuplation, and cooking the books to the tune of about $11 billion. When Worldcom collapsed the scraps were bought up by Verizon. The layoff that got me happened because - get this - Bernie Ebbers had all his money tied up on Worldcom stock and when the shares tanked, he had a margin call. The company had to loan him $400 million so he wouldn't dump his shares. So, $400 million went to Ebbers, and 8,000 people got whacked to pay for it. Ebbers is now doing 25 years in Club Fed, where he will die if there's any justice.
  
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- Corey Lewis on Mar 10, 2016
  
  @FreedMike Wow, $3.8B of fraud, after he used the company as his own private loan source for his other businesses.
  
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