Wolfgang Reitzle: Thriving in the Prosperous Gas Business
March 20, 2008

When German engineer and businessman Wolfgang Reitzle departed Ford Motor Co. in May 2002, it was expected he eventually would turn up somewhere in the auto industry he’d grown up in.

Dubbed the auto industry’s preeminent car guy by Fortune magazine in 2000 and advocated by some to become CEO of BMW, where he had spent most of his career, Reitzle ended his automotive career as head of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group.

At the time, the luxury car group comprised Aston Martin, Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover. Today the group is gone, with last year's sale of Aston Martin and the impending sale of Jaguar and Land Rover to India’s Tata likely to be consummated next week. 

But Reitzle, now CEO of Germany’s Linde Group, the world’s largest engineering and industrial gas company, seems quite content to be in the thriving industry he's in rather than on the auto business roller-coaster, based on a one-on-one interview in Thursday's Financial Times.

Reitzle told the London newspaper in its View from the Top column that despite the slumping U.S. and global economies, it’s business as usual at his company in the 100-some countries and the vastly diverse industries in which it operates. In fact, he said, some of his company's clients, particularly those in the Middle East, are “swimming in cash.”

Those aren’t words anyone is hearing in the auto industry, that’s for sure. No wonder he doesn’t long to be back in the car biz.

His sole mention of the auto industry came at the end of the View from the Top, which always closes with the interviewer naming a topic and the interviewee going long or short on it as one would in buying stocks.

"Ferdinand Piech?" the interviewer asked.

Reitzle's one-word answer of the VW chief: "Long."

Photo by Linde Group

Posted by Michelle Krebs at 7:49 AM under Ford , Personalities | Comments (0) | digg this | Seed Newsvine