Siemens' board to discuss management's future at weekend: sources

MUNICH (Reuters) - Siemens' supervisory board will meet at the weekend to discuss the future of the German engineering group's management, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday, days after Siemens abandoned its 2014 profit margin target.

Pressure is building on Chief Executive Peter Loescher who is seen as struggling to turn Siemens around.

The agenda for both emergency meetings includes an item on "the future composition of management", one of the sources said.

Shares in the company turned positive after the news, gaining 1.5 percent at 79.81 euros by 1227 GMT.

Supervisory board members representing Siemens workers and shareholders will meet separately ahead of a joint meeting scheduled for Wednesday, a day before the company releases third-quarter results, the sources said.

Siemens' supervisory board has 20 members and, as is customary in Germany, half of them represent the interests of workers and the other half those of shareholders.

Siemens declined to comment.

Loescher has been trying to boost margins after criticism for being too slow to react to the global economic downturn. Last year, he said Siemens would save 6 billion euros ($8 billion) over two years to compete with rivals such as General Electric Co .

But Siemens, whose products range from gas turbines to fast trains and hearing aids, has so far failed to make the progress Loescher promised investors at the time and just three months ago lowered its profit outlook for this year.

The group expects net profit from continuing operations to reach the lower end of its outlook range of between 4.5 billion euros ($6.0 billion) and 5 billion in the current year.

"Five to 6 billion euros of profit are apparently still not enough," Juergen Kerner, a board member at labor union IG Metall, told paper Donau-Zeitung in its Friday edition. He said the company needed a "new prospects", especially in Germany.

Since Loescher took over in 2007, the number of Siemens employees in Germany has fallen by 25,000 to 119,000, not including staff at closed or divested businesses such as its IT unit or recently spun-off lighting company Osram .

(Reporting by Jens Hack; Writing by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Louise Ireland and Christoph Steitz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/siemens-board-members-discuss-future-management-sources-113200208.html

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