Audi parts ways with board member Renate Vachenauer

Personnel Audi: Another Restructuring in the Board

2025-10-16 Source: dpa 1 min Reading Time

The leadership of the automaker remains unsettled – now Renate Vachenauer, the only woman on the management board, has to leave. For board members with a BMW background, Ingolstadt (Germany) is a challenging environment.

Renate Vachenauer, the procurement board member at Audi, is leaving the manufacturer prematurely and quite suddenly.(Image: Audi) — Renate Vachenauer, the procurement board member at Audi, is leaving the manufacturer prematurely and quite suddenly.
(Image: Audi)

The automaker Audi, struggling with poor business, is parting ways with the only woman on the seven-member board: Procurement manager Renate Vachenauer will leave the VW subsidiary this Wednesday (October 15). This was decided by the supervisory board, as the company announced. The separation is taking place "in the best mutual agreement."

Previously, the Bild newspaper reported on the personnel matter. The chemistry between her and CEO Gernot Döllner was reportedly not right, according to the publication. Vachenauer is one of the few remaining top executives of the manufacturer who were brought into the leadership team under Döllner's predecessor Markus Duesmann.

Walker as an Interim Solution

Vachenauer joined Audi from BMW in 2021 and had been a board member only since April 2023. She will now be temporarily succeeded by Production Board Member Gerd Walker. The electrical engineering expert is the second former BMW top manager to leave Audi. In August 2024, Sales Board Member Hildegard Wortmann, who had also worked for the Munich rival for a long time, departed from Audi.

The interim boss of Wortmann and Vachenauer, Markus Duesmann, who served as Audi's CEO from 2020 to 2023, also came from BMW. Duesmann was once regarded as a beacon of hope after the years of the diesel scandal but had to leave in September 2023, more than a year before his contract ended.

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