Siemens Appoints A Director From SAP

The appointment was one of several changes in top Siemens management announced on Wednesday as the company tries to move past the upheaval surrounding Mr. Löscher’s departure in July.

Mr. Ackermann, 65, will be replaced by Jim Hagemann Snabe, who remains the top executive at SAP, but has said he plans to leave that post next year for a seat on that company’s board.

Mr. Ackermann, the former head of Deutsche Bank and one of Germany’s best-known business figures, left the Siemens board last week, citing “questions of style and fairness” in the company’s dealings after the board had Mr. Löscher removed. German news reports said Mr. Ackermann had opposed the board’s decision to oust Mr. Löscher and replace him with Joe Kaeser, then the company’s chief financial officer, after Siemens missed several profit targets.

On Wednesday, Siemens named Ralf P. Thomas to succeed Mr. Kaeser as chief financial officer. Mr. Thomas has been the finance chief of the company’s industry division.

Siemens is a pillar of the German economy, and its boardroom turmoil drew the attention of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who thought it was important for the company to “return to calm waters,” according to her spokesman. The company, based in Munich, has 370,000 employees worldwide and makes heavy-duty industrial goods, including power turbines, locomotives and medical imaging devices. It is a rival to General Electric.

The chairman of the Siemens board, Gerhard Cromme, said Mr. Snabe, 47, would bring knowledge of software and computer technology.

“In view of the growing strategic importance of digitalization for Siemens’s core businesses, we are adding to the technology and software competence of the supervisory board,” Mr. Cromme said in a statement. “We are gaining an internationally respected expert in this area.”

Siemens to Oust Chief After String of Setbacks That Prompted Profit Warning

FRANKFURT — The supervisory board of Siemens, one of Germany’s largest companies, said that it would fire its chief executive at a meeting on Wednesday and replace him with an insider following a string of problems that led to a profit warning last week.

Peter Löscher, an Austrian who has been chief executive of the electronics and engineering giant since 2007, is taking the blame for a series of missteps that have plagued the company during the last year, including a late delivery of high-speed trains for the German national railroad and delays in completing offshore wind turbine projects.

The German news media reported that Joe Kaeser, a member of Siemens’s managing board and its chief financial officer, would be most likely to replace Mr. Löscher, but a company spokesman said on Sunday that he could not confirm the reports. In a statement Saturday, Siemens, based in Munich, said its supervisory board would name another member of the company’s executive board as chief executive, but it did not say who.

Siemens’s fortunes have consequences for the German economy as a whole because it is one of the country’s largest employers, with about 120,000 workers, and because it is something of a bellwether for the country’s industrial sector.

Along with automobiles, the German economy is based on the production of high-priced goods that are sold to governments and corporations. Siemens’s broad array of products includes gear for power generation, trains and other transportation equipment, and medical devices like X-ray scanners. Problems at Siemens are potentially a bad omen for the country.

On Thursday, Siemens shares plunged 6 percent after the company said it would not meet its profit goals for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Siemens did not give a detailed explanation for the expected shortfall, attributing it to “lower market expectations.” But it appeared to reflect a combination of weaker-than-expected economic growth in crucial markets as well as management mistakes.

The profit warning fed concern that demand for German exports from China and other developing markets may no longer be strong enough to compensate for the weak European economy. Sales in the United States, where Siemens has 60,000 employees, also appear to be falling short of expectations despite the recovering growth in America.

Germany has weathered the euro zone crisis better than other countries because its machinery and engineering divisions have been able to tap developing markets, especially China. But recently the Chinese economy has been cooling, while Europe remains in recession.

Siemens had already reported a 7 percent decline in sales during the first three months of 2013, to 18 billion euros, or about $24 billion. On Thursday, the company is scheduled to announce earnings for the quarter that ended June 30.

Mr. Kaeser, reported as the likely replacement for Mr. Löscher, is a 56-year-old Siemens veteran credited with keeping the company on a steady course after the previous chief executive, Klaus Kleinfeld, resigned under pressure in 2007. Mr. Kleinfeld is now chief executive of the aluminum producer Alcoa.

Mr. Löscher, 55, was the latest in a line of Siemens chiefs who have tried to focus the sprawling company on its most profitable businesses and make it easier to manage. Under Mr. Löscher, Siemens spun off its Osram lighting unit, and this month it sold its half of a joint venture with Nokia that supplies equipment for mobile telecommunication networks.

Those moves raised money and simplified the company but were not enough to compensate for other problems, including delays in delivering high-speed ICE trains to Deutsche Bahn, the German railway.

Members of the supervisory board met informally on Saturday and will make the management changes formal at a regular meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

Siemens C.E.O. to Leave Following Profit Warning

Siemens said in a statement late on Saturday that at a meeting on July 31, the supervisory board would pass the decision on Loescher's early departure.

"In addition, it will decide on the appointment of a member of the managing board as President and CEO," it added.

Siemens, among Germany's three biggest companies by market value, did not provide further details.

Two people familiar with the matter earlier told Reuters that the majority of Siemens' 20-member supervisory board favored finance chief Joe Kaeser as replacement for Loescher. The company declined to comment.

There have been persistent rumors over the past year that Kaeser, who was already on Siemens' management board when Loescher joined in 2007, had his eye on Loescher's job, though the two have repeatedly said they worked well together.

Late last year, when questioned about the rumors, the CFO said the two complemented each other like "light and dark".

OVERPROMISED, UNDERDELIVERED

When Loescher became CEO six years ago as the first company outsider to take the helm at Siemens, he was presented as a hero who would lead Siemens out of a massive bribery scandal that had tarnished its image and its finances.

But after tackling that task, Loescher started losing credibility as he repeatedly misjudged demand development in its main markets.

A bellwether of Germany's economy whose products range from gas turbines to fast trains and hearing aids, Siemens is suffering from the stuttering global demand that saw German exports fall the most since late 2009 in May.

In addition, Siemens' earnings have been hit repeatedly by one-time charges related to project delays and other issues.

Loescher was forced to put on the back-burner a strategy to increase annual sales by about a third to 100 billion euros last year, announcing instead a plan to save 6 billion euros over two years to compete with rivals such as General Electric Co.

The plan, which unions fear could affect 10,000 jobs, was meant to boost Siemens' core operating profit margin to at least 12 percent from 9.5 percent by 2014.

On Thursday, the company scrapped that target, issuing a brief statement in which it cited lower expectations for how its markets would perform.

Siemens is scheduled to release third-quarter results on Thursday when analysts expect Loescher to elaborate on what prompted the company to scrap its margin target.

(Reporting by Jens Hack.; Writing by Maria Sheahan. Editing by Andreas Cremer and David Evans)