Story ID: CB-AirbusExecs11212018
Airbus Names New CFO and COO
By: Cathy Buyck
Caption: Appointments are part of a wider management shake-up and renewal 
Word Count: 489
Airbus might have officially shed the rule to share out the top executive roles between French and German nationals, but Wednesday’s appointments show that the long-standing practice still dictates key appointments. 

Europe's biggest aerospace, defense, and space group named Michael Schöllhorn chief operating officer for its commercial aircraft business, replacing Tom Williams, who is due to retire at the end of this year, and Dominik Asam as chief financial officer to take over from Harald Wilhelm. Wilhelm announced his departure in May. The two appointments follow last month’s board decision to elect current Commercial Aircraft CEO Guillaume Faury to replace Tom Enders next April as the chief executive of the entire entity. Enders is a German national and Faury is French, while both Schöllborn and Asam are German.

Schöllhorn, 53, currently is COO for Bosch subsidiary BSH Home Appliances in Munich. He served in the German Armed Forces as a helicopter pilot and officer from 1984 to 1994 and is an engineer by training. “Michael brings a vast amount of expertise in digitalization, end-to-end process optimization, manufacturing, quality and supply chain management—key assets to transition our company to the next levels of production efficiency,” Faury said.

Asam, 49, is also an engineer. He’s currently CFO at German semiconductor maker Infineon Technologies and he previously held executive roles at Siemens, RWE, and investment bank Goldman Sachs. Enders said Asam has “an outstanding professional background, and he will, no doubt, be a great wingman” for Faury, who said he is “very much looking forward to working with Dominik to continue improving our company’s financial performance.” A finance expert with an engineering and wide industrial background “is a great choice for this mission,” Feury noted.

Schöllborn and Asam will take up their new roles in February and April 2019, respectively.

The new appointments are part of a comprehensive overhaul of Airbus’s top management, sparked by internal tensions and investigations into alleged bribery and corruption in the commercial aircraft business unit. The management reshuffle also saw the departure of Commercial Aircraft CEO Fabrice Bregier in January following a power struggle with Enders and the sudden resignation of Eric Schulz in September as Airbus chief commercial officer after holding the role for less than a year. The former Rolls-Royce executive was replaced by company insider and former ATR CEO Christian Scherer.

Faury still will need to find a replacement for another long-time Airbus executive, head of commercial aircraft programs Didier Evrard, 65, who is set to retire next year.

The new management team will have to deal with A320neo delays and production hiccups, slow sales of the A330neo, and a lack of new customers for the A380. Airbus also could face a major disruption of its supply chain if the UK exits the EU without a deal at the end of March 2019.