Brose North America, an automotive supplier of mechatronics, has announced Frank Lubischer will be its new president as Brose Group restructures its top-level management team. Lubischer will be responsible for all business in North America, effective March 1. Other executive changes made by the Brose Group include appointing Patrick Popp to executive vice president of electrical drives and Niklas Beyes to executive vice president of Brose Group’s Commercial Administration division.
“The reorganization of our company’s top management is complete. We will push ahead with the successful development of Brose with a strong management team,” said Kurt Sauernheimer, CEO of the Brose Group.
Lubischer joins Brose North America with nearly 30 years of experience in the automotive supplier industry. Most recently, he was senior vice president, chief technology officer and chief strategy officer at Nexteer Automotive, where he was responsible for strategy, technology and global engineering. He also has held management roles at ZF Group, formerly TRW Automotive, and Lucas, among other companies.
Popp was appointed head of Brose’s electrical drives division on Feb. 1, succeeding Reinhard Kretschmer, who will retire at the end of 2018. In this role, Popp will be responsible for the global drives business, led out of the Brose Würzburg facility in Germany. Popp has held a variety of management board positions at international companies in the automotive and electronics industries, including most recently as head of the professional lighting systems division at Philips. He earned a doctorate in engineering and has more than 20 years of experience in management as well as in product development and digitization.
Beyes will take over responsibility for Brose Group’s commercial administration activities on May 1. He has more than 20 years of experience in finance and the automotive industry, including financial management positions. Most recently, he was chief financial officer for the FTE automotive group in Ebern, Germany, and previously was CFO of Europe at Schaeffler KG and a member of the management board of SKF GmbH Germany. He earned a master’s degree in business administration.
At the beginning of 2018, Kurt Sauernheimer was appointed CEO of Brose Group from his previous role as executive vice president of door systems. The executive vice presidents of seat systems and purchasing also switched positions at that time.
