Volvo Regionalizes Senior Management Structure

Volvo Cars Corp. has restructured its senior managers around three new business regions: Asia, the Americas and Europe/Middle East/Africa.

CEO Hakan Samuelsson says the streamlined structure will support the company's aggressive sales goals since being acquired by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Ltd. in 2010. Volvo is targeting worldwide sales of 800,000 units by 2020 compared with 465,900 in 2014.

Lex Kerssemakers will lead the Americas region, which stretches from Canada to South America. Kerssemakers was Volvo's senior vice president of product strategy and vehicle line management.

The new Asia territory will be headed by Lars Danielson, currently senior vice president of Volvo Cars China.

Anders Gustafsson, currently president of Volvo Cars Sweden, has been named senior vice president of the new Europe/Middle East/Africa region.

Each of the three executives will have complete operational authority for their region. All three will work with Alain Visser, who has worldwide responsibility for Volvo marketing, sales and service. Visser's job will be to define Volvo's global strategy and drive overall commercial performance, according to the company.

Volvo also promoted Klas Bendrik, its chief information officer, to a newly created senior vice president position to oversee vehicle connectivity products and services.