GM Announces Sales And Marketing Reorganization In Europe

ZURICH, Schwitzerland – February 6, 2009: General Motors (GM) will reorganize the sales, marketing and aftersales function in Europe. The aim is to give more responsibility to the individual brands and markets in order to be able to respond fast to the rapidly changing market conditions, while continuing to focus on growth markets (particularly Russia). The changes will focus on strengthening GM’s brands and maximizing efficiency by capturing the non-customer visible multi-brand synergies.

GM Europe will also streamline the cluster organizations and have the markets report directly into the brands. This allows a more targeted approach in the individual markets, speeds up decision making and simplifies the structure.

To achieve this, GM Europe announces the appointment of three brand leaders, reporting directly to Brent Dewar, GM Europe vice president, sales, marketing and aftersales: Alain Visser, currently GME chief marketing officer, will be named GME vice president Opel Wayne Brannon, currently executive director Chevrolet Europe, will be named GME vice president Chevrolet Jan-Åke Jonsson, will add responsibility for marketing and sales for the Saab brand in Europe to his role of managing director of Saab Automobile AB

“The multi-brand structure has served the organization well and vaulted GM Europe to over 2 million vehicle sales for the last three years. We will now transfer to a set-up with more autonomy for the individual brands, increasing our efforts to grow brand equity, accelerating the decision-making process and driving business growth in Europe”, said Dewar.