A management task force and a special committee of the supervisory board are to help Siemens Energy get a grip on the ongoing problems with its wind power business. The special committee met for its first meeting on Thursday evening, as was heard from supervisory board circles. According to reports, his job is to monitor the processing of the quality problems with wind turbines, for which Siemens Energy had to withdraw its forecast at the end of June.
At the time, Siemens Energy announced that there could be increased failure rates for wind turbines due to quality problems. At the time, the costs were estimated to be more than one billion euros. The next day, the stock fell by about a third. Siemens Energy has been struggling with difficulties in its wind power business for years.
Despite the ongoing difficulties, Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch and the head of the wind business, Jochen Eickholt, still have the trust of the supervisory board, as was heard. They are the right ones to solve the problems. The latest profit warning should have been the last, it said.
The amount of the costs is currently unclear
According to the supervisory board, the problems occur with wind turbines from the X4 and X5 series. Around 800 of the X5 have been manufactured so far, 100 of which have already been delivered. The X4, which was developed by Gamesa before the founding of the Siemens Gamesa joint venture, is about more wind turbines, but the expected failure rate is lower there, it said.
How high the costs would really be in the end is difficult to predict. It is also about the question of whether the problems are just a production issue or a problem in the design. The latter would be more difficult.
The former Voith boss Hubert Lienhard is to become chairman of the special committee. This was previously reported by the “WirtschaftsWoche”. According to the Supervisory Board circles, Siemens board member Matthias Rebellius, Randy Zwirn and Laurence Mulliez are also part of the new body. All four are already on the supervisory board of Siemens Energy. An important criterion for the election of the members was reportedly technical expertise.
