The chairman of the supervisory board of deutsche bahn, utz-hellmuth felcht, has announced his resignation for the end of march. This was announced by the federally owned company in berlin.
The difficult search for top personnel had also led to criticism of felcht. It was further complicated by the change of government. It is not yet clear who will represent the federal government as owner of the railroad on the supervisory board in the future.
Felcht had been held responsible by other members of the control committee for the failed contract renewal of former rail chief rudiger grube. Anonymously, they accused the former chemical manager of having prepared the then supervisory board meeting poorly and then not having a grip on it.
According to bahn, felcht has decided "after careful consideration (…) decided to take this step". "In this way, i wanted to give the owner sufficient time to decide on a succession plan," he was quoted as saying. "At the same time, i wanted to ensure an orderly transition of my duties to my successor and, in particular, to ensure that all resolutions and decisions still pending during this period could be dealt with properly without delay and irrespective of the change in the chairmanship of the supervisory board."
The executive board of deutsche bahn was only completed again two weeks ago – after just under eight months. The company’s supervisory board had filled two vacant positions. The good traffic and logistics division will in future be headed by the former head of germany at bank barclays, alexander doll. Mechanical engineering professor sabina jeschke becomes director of digitalization and technology.
In addition, a successor to the outgoing member of the board of management responsible for human resources, ulrich weber, has been appointed: in january, martin seiler, now human resources director of deutsche telekom, will take over responsibility for the approximately 300,000 rail employees worldwide.
It was the third attempt to complete the board of the state-owned company around its chairman richard lutz. The head of DB cargo, a subsidiary of guterbahn, jurgen wilder, was supposed to join the group’s executive board and take over the department of good transport and logistics. He failed, however, due to resistance from the employee representatives on the supervisory board.