Maria Röttger succeeds Anish K. Taneja as the new President & CEO of Michelin Europe North
Effective 1 June 2022, Maria Röttger will be the President & CEO of Michelin Europe North. She is taking over from Anish K. Taneja, who has decided to move to a new role outside the company. Röttger, who is already a member of the Management Board for Europe North, is the first woman to be appointed to this position internationally since the company’s global reorganisation in 2018.
Michelin is committed to diversity, and that applies to its management team, too. From June 2022, Maria Röttger will take charge of the entire Europe North region and therefore all the activities of the French mobility company in this territory.
“Reinforcing Michelin’s technology leadership in the region”
Maria Röttger: “I am delighted to have the trust of the Michelin Group and am looking forward to my new duties in this highly responsible position. In recent years, we have done a great deal of work under the leadership of Anish Taneja to achieve sustainable growth and stay competitive. Together, our staff, my colleagues in the management team and I will continue to pursue this transformation, reinforce Michelin’s technology leadership in our region and thus make an important contribution to Michelin’s strategy.”
Röttger was previously Vice President Chief Administrative Officer in the region’s management team and responsible for HR, legal matters, quality, IT, procurement and industry, among other things. She joined Michelin in January 2020 from the French food company Danone, where she held senior roles in HR and was involved in the transformation of many parts of the company.
“Together, we have surpassed ambitious targets.”
Anish K. Taneja: “I am very proud of what we have achieved in the years since our regional organisation was first established. Four years ago, we set out to significantly increase profits in the region, maximise employee satisfaction, move much closer to our customers and prepare Michelin Europe North for the future with sustainable growth and a transformation that was geared resolutely toward the market. I’m proud to say that not only have we achieved all these goals, but we have also surpassed them by a considerable margin. That is why I am all the more pleased that a successor from the region’s current Management Board has been found who can further drive the change in our organisation successfully. Maria Röttger will be the first woman in the world to take on this leading regional role within Michelin. For my own part, I am looking forward to taking on a new challenge outside Michelin and will announce what that role will be as soon as I am legally permitted to do so. I wish Maria all the success in her new and exciting role and, most importantly, I hope she gets the same support that has always been given to me.”
After four years as President & CEO of Region Europe North and eight years at the company, Anish K. Taneja has decided to accept a position outside the Michelin Group. He was appointed to the management board of an international corporation. Taneja joined Michelin in 2013, having previously worked at Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Sixt SE.
Diversity as a cornerstone of the company strategy
Röttger’s appointment as President & CEO of the region reinforces one of the Michelin Group’s strategic objectives. At its 2021 Annual General Meeting, the company presented its “Everything Sustainable” strategy. As part of this approach, Michelin aims to strike a balance between people, the environment and the pursuit of profits. Diversity is a cornerstone of this strategy, and the company is aiming for women to make up 35 percent of its management team by 2030. Four of the eleven board members of the Region Europe North are already women, including Maria Röttger, who will be the first woman worldwide to take on the lead role for one of Michelin’s regions. Four of the eleven members of the Michelin Group’s central management team are also women.
Region Europe North as an economic powerhouse
In 2018, the Michelin Group was divided into ten regions. Region Europe North comprises Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, the UK, the Republic of Ireland and Iceland. The region’s organisational headquarters is in Frankfurt am Main, which is also the base of the Management Board.
In terms of sales, Michelin Europe North is the third-largest region in the Michelin Group and therefore an important economic powerhouse for the company. Michelin employs approximately 7,000 employees in Europe North, around 5,900 of whom work in production and logistics, while the other 1,100 work in the central, sales and marketing departments.