MUMBAI: Engineering major Siemens on Friday made Sunil Mathur its new India chief executive officer (CEO) as part of its larger exercise of restructuring its business operations and manpower. Mathur, currently the India CFO, is a company lifer working with the organisation for 25 years and will be the first Indian to take over the regional top job in the storied German company.
Mathur takes charge as CEO on November 1 and will also become MD & CEO of Siemens, the local listed flagship entity, from January 2014. Parent Siemens holds 75% in Siemens India.
He will be replacing Armin Bruck who will relocate to Singapore taking charge as CEO of the regional office there. The incumbent head of the Singapore regional company Lothar Herrmann is moving to China to succeed Mei-Wei Cheng, who is retiring from the company.
Mathur, a chartered accountant by training from New Delhi's Institute of Chartered Accountants of India ( ICAI), joined the company as its internal auditor and has worked across various departments and roles - in India, Europe and even in Germany. Among the various finance-related responsibilities he held, includes being the cluster CFO for South Asia, CFO of Siemens BHELBSE -0.07 % JV and director of business administration of Siemen's power generation services in Germany.
He is taking over at a time when the entire capital goods space, including that at Siemens, is facing macro headwinds. The company posted weak results in the third quarter of FY13 with a 12.5% YoY revenue decline. Led by a sharp drop in orders from energy and industrial sector, the lower volumes, pricing pressure and cost escalations have severely dented its profitability.
Last year, the company shut down its wind turbine plant in Vadodara, and, in August,Siemens India sold its postal and parcel and airport logistics technology business to a group company.
Siemens was incorporated in India in 1922 and the Indian entity is the fourth largest contributor to the group's revenues. Mathur's appointment as the managing director and CEO of India coincided with Siemens' global CEO Joe Kaeser's first visit to India as the conglomerate's global head.
