Adidas: Arthur Hoeld promoted to replace Roland Auschel

By

Olivier Guyot

Translated by
Cassidy STEPHENS

Published
Mar 9, 2023

On the occasion of the presentation of the 2022 annual results, Bjorn Gulden, who has taken over as CEO of Adidas, detailed some changes in the management team. 

The former Puma boss, first confirmed the group's CFO Harm Olmeyer, who has been in office since 2017 and whose contract, which has been extended by three years, will end in early 2028. "He is now running in parallel to mine," explained Bjorn Gulden in a conference with financial analysts. "We have known each other for about 30 years. And to be very honest with you, it is partly because of him that I accepted this position. Harm has all the experience, knowledge and attitude we need to turn this company around."

But the new CEO also reshuffled the management team, announcing the departure of Roland Auschel, a major figure in the group for several years. "Roland Auschel, who has been with us for 33 years, has decided to leave. Roland has done a lot of good things for this company. And I think a lot of people would say that Adi wouldn't be where it is if he hadn't been there." The group's commercial director will be replaced on April 1 by Arthur Hoeld, who has been officiating as director of the EMEA region since 2018. On the product side, it is Brian Grevy who will leave the company at the end of March. The new boss has decided to take over the product and marketing operations directly. "Brian came in, I think, four weeks after COVID, and it was very difficult, of course, to work without meeting his team. Brian spent a lot of time and energy making changes. But you know, when you have so much to do on the brand side, it's very difficult," he said. "That's why we decided that the new CEO would take over the brand. It doesn't mean that I will decide everything we have to do, but it means that all the business units, all the creative people will have direct access to me, so that we can speed things up."

The Adidas executive committee is completed by Amanda Rajkumar, director of human resources and Martin Shankland, director of operations.