Business
It used to be fun being one of the boss men, but not if you work at Schwarz Group these days. Klaus Gehrig, the mighty figure of power running the German retail giant founded by secretive entrepreneur Dieter Schwarz, seems to revel in home-made creative disruption. In increasingly frequent purges the 70-year-old corporate veteran regularly gives his top brass the chop, regardless of their sales achievements. No one is sacrosanct and no one is spared, if they question the general partner's structural changes.In an unmistakable power shift from operations to the consultative committee headed by Gerd Chrzanowski (47) at HQ in Neckarsulm, top managers are often obliged to vacate their offices so abruptly that no immediate replacement can be found. Only three weeks ago, Patrick Kaudewitz, CEO of hypermarket subsidiary Kaufland, had to make his goodbyes; now it is the turn of Jesper Højer, CEO of discounter Lidl, to say his sad farewells.Ignazio Paternò, a former head of Lidl Italia and currently deputy director of purchasing at Lidl Foundation in Neckarsulm, will assume Højer's role on an interim basis. The new supervisory body Schwarz Treuhand (SUT) is expected to make this arrangement permanent as early as this spring. But, at the current rate of survival, Paternò will last only two or three years.We all love to moralise and journalists more than most people. It would be immensely satisfying to write how the arbitrary ruthlessness of Klaus Gehrig is ruining the company for good and all. But this would create a false causality. In fact, with sincere apologies to both idealists and the tender-hearted, the very opposite would seem to be the case...