The heavily indebted Munich conglomerate Baywa is separating from its CEO Frank Hiller, who was appointed less than a year ago, due to internal disputes.
The manager will leave the company “by mutual agreement” on July 31, as the supervisory board announced. However, Hiller’s position as CEO ends with immediate effect. The group cited “different views on the company’s medium to long-term strategy” as the reason. The supervisory board did not appoint a successor; Hiller’s tasks should be divided among the remaining three board members.
Rescue plan should continue
There should be no change to the restructuring plan, which envisages financial recovery by the end of 2028: “The initiated Restructuring of our company is going according to plan and will continue to be actively pursued,” said Supervisory Board Chairman Gregor Scheller.
Hiller has been in the executive chair for less than a year
Hiller only took up his post on March 1, 2025. He was supposed to reorganize the group together with the restructuring director Michael Baur, whom the supervisory board had brought in from the management consultancy Alix Partners. The division of labor stipulated that Bauer would be in charge of the restructuring and Hiller would be responsible for reorganizing the remaining business. But that obviously didn’t work according to plan. The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” reported a few days ago that Hiller’s chair was wobbling. The supervisory board met several times in the past few days. Hiller’s predecessor, Marcus Pöllinger, had to leave early after a short term in office.
BayWa’s most important line of business is agricultural trade; the company plays an important role for farmers, especially in the south and east of Germany: On the one hand, BayWa buys grain harvests and other products and, on the other hand, supplies farmers with seeds, fertilizer, agricultural machinery and other needs.
Huge mountain of debt is to be reduced
The group ran into difficulties in the summer of 2024 and is currently one of the largest restructuring cases in Germany. A major trigger was the high interest payments on 5.4 billion euros in bank loans. The restructuring plan calls for four billion euros in loans to be paid off. To achieve this, around two thirds of the former BayWa stores are to be sold. Essentially, these are the foreign subsidiaries that the group bought on credit in the 2010s.
The workforce is also expected to be reduced by two thirds as part of the restructuring: at the end of 2023, the group employed over 23,000 people worldwide, and in the end there could be around 8,000. Baywa will then once again be a trading company largely limited to Germany.
MUNICH (dpa-AFX)
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