Tobias Moers will replace Andy Palmer as CEO at Aston Martin
Aston Martin has confirmed that Tobias Moers, the current head of Mercedes-AMG, will replace Andy Palmer as Chief Executive Officer. Palmer has been both President and CEO of Aston Martin since 2014. He will step down immediately. Moers will take up the post of CEO on 1 August 2020. He will also sit on the board as an executive director.
Keith Stanton, Aston Martin’s Vice-President and head of manufacturing will lead the company until Moers’s arrival. Philipp Schiemer who is currently running Mercedes-Benz’s Brazilian division will become the new head of Mercedes-AMG.
Moers, who is German, has worked at Daimler for more than 25 years. He began working in the Mercedes-AMG performance division in 1994. He became the firm’s head of vehicle development in 2002, taking the leadership role in 2013.
Under Moers, Mercedes-AMG experienced a major expansion, doubling its model range and hugely increasing sales to 132,000 cars last year, compared to around 70,000 in 2015.
Andy Palmer joined Aston Martin from Nissan. He has been credited with enabling growth by attracting new investment, expanding its model range and cutting costs. Palmer also vowed to improve build quality. He personally inspected the first 1000 DB11s before their delivery to new owners.
Palmer was instrumental in the launch of the ambitious ‘Second Century Plan’ to take Aston Martin into the next 100 years of its life. This involved building a new factory, St Athan in Wales, and expanding the Aston Martin range including the firm’s first SUV, the new DBX. The DBX will be built at the new St Athan factory.
Not all of Palmer’s plans were successful. This included backing the decision to float Aston Martin Lagonda on the London Stock Exchange in 2018. The firm’s share price has fallen more than 90% from its initial value. Aston Martin recorded a £119 million loss in the first quarter of this year. The firm has since heavily revamped its product plan, including delaying the relaunch of Lagonda as a luxury electric car brand. Share prices rallied following news of Palmer’s departure.