Stellantis reorganizes its leadership in the face of the business crisis and begins the process to replace Carlos Tavares as CEO

Stellar has confirmed in the last few hours that it has already started the “formal process” to designate the successor of the current CEO, Carlos Tavares when he leaves office at the beginning of 2026.

“It will be led by a Special Committee of the Board chaired by John Elkann which will complete its work in the fourth quarter of 2025,” says the manufacturer’s statement.

Movement that comes in a complementary manner with a profound restructuring of the company’s management bodies in the face of the business crisis it is experiencing, above all, due to the slowdown in sales in North America.

Consequently, Stellantis has replaced its financial director in the last few hours, Natalie Knight who will leave the automobile company and will be replaced by Doug Ostermann.

Knight was the first Stellantis executive to speak out about the group’s mid-2024 expectations, warning that margin targets were “overly ambitious.” After his statements to analysts, the shares began to fall until they lost more than 43% of capitalization so far this year.

Beyond the financial department, the manufacturer has confirmed that Uwe Hochgeschurtz until now director of operations in Europe, will leave the company – he will be replaced Jean-Philippe Learnato who maintains the position of general director of Pro One, the commercial vehicle division -, his counterparts in North America and in the Maserati and Alfa Romeo commercial brands are also leaving the company, according to the Europa Press agency.

Within the framework of this restructuring, Antonio Filosa has been named director of operations for North America, as well as CEO of Jeep, replacing Carlos Zarlenga, whose next position “will be the subject of a new announcement”, as stated by Stellantis. Santo Ficili, for his part, will now be in charge of Maserati and Alfa Romeo.

At the same time, Gregoire Olivier will be the director of operations for China, maintaining his liaison role with the local manufacturer Leapmotor.