Word: pierer
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Dates: during 2007-2007
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...repositioning the company as a focused solutions provider, he split with his predecessor and broke the back of the traditional German business culture that ruled Siemens. Von Pierer, CEO from 1992 to 2005, had begun to transform the company from a sprawling bureaucracy that largely lived off fat contracts from Germany's state- owned firms into a global operator. He rationalized Siemens' many disparate businesses into a group of 13--such as automation, power generation, medical technology and telecommunications. By the end of last year, Siemens employed 475,000 people in 190 countries and generated 81% of its sales outside...
...Pierer was ultimately a defender of the old Siemens corporate tradition, however, always trying to balance the interests of shareholders and stakeholders, often at the expense of the former. He believed that synergies among the various divisions justified Siemens' cumbersome structure; well-performing businesses would offset weaknesses in other divisions...
...acted more like an American portfolio manager, discarding businesses that didn't meet profit targets or fit into his megacities strategy. Co-workers say Kleinfeld, a music lover who plays a mean blues harmonica, is easygoing and adaptable, a contrast to the stiff corporate culture of Von Pierer's world...
Their differences showed. In recent months, say insiders, Kleinfeld and Von Pierer often clashed over strategy. In corporate Germany, a departing CEO often becomes chairman of the supervisory board. In the case of Siemens, Von Pierer simply moved across the hall to a new office in the executive suite, sharing his old secretary and staff and even the executive washroom with Kleinfeld. Von Pierer began to block Kleinfeld from taking more radical restructuring steps, say these insiders. In the end, Von Pierer had to fall on his sword, but one tantalizing theory is that Von Pierer made sure he took...
...ranks of Siemens' multicultural community were certainly rooting for Kleinfeld and a weakening of what remains of the German Old Boy network in Munich. With the executives of the Von Pierer era either retired or under investigation, Kleinfeld was supposed to have had a free hand to go about cleaning up the company from the inside and to take his restructuring drive to the next level. But the past had one blast left, and it got Kleinfeld...