MAY 12, 2004

Is Renschler to be the new Mercedes boss?

There are reports coming out of Germany that Andreas Renschler, president of DaimlerChrysler's Smart compact car unit, will soon replace Jurgen Hubbert as head of the Mercedes Car business, and thus become the man in charge of the Stuttgart firm's Formula 1 involvement. The stories have been denied as "pure speculation" but the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper usually has good connections within the DC empire. Hubbert's position was to be taken by Wolfgang Bernhard, the chief financial officer of Chrysler, but a boardroom dispute with chairman Jurgen Schrempp has taken him out of the picture.

Renschler (45) has been with Daimler-Benz since he joined the firm in 1988 after working for the Trumpf engineering company. In 1992 he led the team that chose the site for the company's US manufacturing in Tuscaloosa and in 1993 was named president and chief executive of Mercedes-Benz US International Inc, the American offshoot of the firm. He became a Daimler-Benz director in 1997 and in 1999 moved on to run global development for the entire DaimlerChrysler Group. He then moved on to head the Smart business and was recently named as the head of Mitsubishi Motors. However it now seems that Schrempp has changed his mind and wants Renschler in Stuttgart.