Infiniti Prez Krueger Takes a Walk, Christian Meunier Steps In
Nissan’s Infiniti division has a new president. Announced Tuesday, Infiniti marketing and sales boss Christian Meunier will take the helm of the automaker’s luxury arm, replacing a departing Roland Krueger, who led the brand since 2015.
The change at the top is effective immediately, as Kruger apparently left in quite a hurry “to pursue new opportunities,” Nissan said in a statement.
In addition to serving as President, Meunier will also wear the chairman’s hat on Infiniti’s management committee. Prior to today, Meunier occupied the post of global division vice president of global marketing and sales operations. Past years saw the exec serve as senior VP for Nissan sales and marketing and operations at Nissan North America, and as president of Nissan Canada. Meunier joined the company in 2002, working for Nissan Europe.
Prior to his entry into the Nissan family, Meunier held positions at Ford, Rover, and Mercedes-Benz.
“Christian Meunier brings a record of success to this role, in addition to continuity based on his current global marketing and sales leadership position at INFINITI,” said Nissan CEO and President Hiroto Saikawa in a statement. “We are fortunate to welcome him to this new challenge.”
Saikawa also provided kind words for the departing Krueger, who’ll likely wash up on the shores of another automaker in short order. The ex-president previously served as a senior VP at BMW Group. Before that, Krueger held posts at Daimler and Mitsubishi.
“Roland Krueger’s contributions over the last four years steered INFINITI through an important period of growth,” Saikawa said. “We thank him and wish him well in his future pursuits.”
The Infiniti brand finds itself at the beginning of a transition to strictly electrified models, with numerous concepts appearing over the past year. Hell, even the past week. Besides introducing the industry’s first variable compression engine in the 2019 QX50, this past year also brought hints that the brand will soon field Nissan’s unusual, Japanese-market e-Power hybrid powertrain.
Despite a year-over-year sales increase of 10.3 percent in December, Infiniti’s 2018 U.S. volume fell below 2017’s figure by 2.7 percent.
[Image: Nissan]
More by Steph Willems
Comments
Join the conversation
I wonder if we'll see Mr. Krueger show up in a new position quickly or if it will take a while. I think it will take a while for him to find a spot. He left quickly because he deduced that the Nissan C-suite is no longer a hospitable place for the gaijin.
It hurts me to see Infiniti in such a place. There's a lot they need to do though: - Q50/Q70 crossover analogues - Engine alignment across platforms (i.e. all RWD vehicles should have 2.0T and 3.0TTs, 2.0T should be the Nissan one) - More hybrids - EV flagship Would be nice if they made the Red Sport more serious too. Why hasn't Nissan applied its DCT learnings from the GT-R to anything else? RS seems like an obvious candidate. Needs an LSD and more tire as well. Would be good if they paired the 2.0T with a hybrid system... the old hybrid with the 3.5 skewed too far towards power rather than efficiency.