Metro Cash & Carry gives country divisions more entrepreneurial freedom

Metro Cash & Carry will grant its 26 national subsidiaries more entrepreneurial freedom in the future and has adapted its organizational structure for this purpose. While the national management will be given greater responsibility for operational functions, the headquarters is changing its management structure. In place of the currently nine-person Metro Cash & Carry Board (Extended Management Board), a team of ten Operating Partners will be overseeing two to three countries each, so their day-today activities will be focused much more sharply on the respective customers and the local demand. The new organizational structure will be gradually implemented starting on July 1, 2015.

"Value is created locally, in the markets and with the customers, which is why we are now giving a further boost to local responsibility and entrepreneurial freedom,” said Olaf Koch, CEO of Metro AG. "We have already decentralised decision making in recent years, strengthening the role of the national managers. As a next step, we want to achieve an even more powerful structure, with faster decision making channels and, above all, with national managers who think and act as entrepreneurs, and who will hold considerably more sway in running their business.”

An Operating Board will replace the current Extended Management Board of METRO Cash & Carry with the goal of supporting the development of the national markets with a much more operational focus. Heading up this management group as CEO from October 1, 2015 will be Pieter Boone, who has been managing Metro Cash & Carry - Russia. Olaf Koch, who has acted as CEO of Metro Cash & Carry as well as CEO of the Metro Group  since 2013, will pass on the ad interim role of Metro Cash & Carry CEO to Pieter Boone in order to focus fully on managing the parent company as CEO of Metro AG.

Olaf Koch said: "We are on the right track. Thanks to the direction we have set and initiatives we have introduced over the last two years, we have now recorded like for- like growth at Metro Cash & Carry for seven successive quarters. The new Operating Model should accelerate this positive trend. With the new Operating Model, we take a logical step in giving the national Managing Directors greater entrepreneurial freedom. While we still want support from the headquarters,'one-size-fits-all' central directives are not effective in the local markets. In the future, we will be able to respond to local demand and special customer requirements much more quickly and therefore increase our growth potential.”

The Metro Group which is one of the leading international retail and wholesale company is active at roughly 2,200 locations in 30 countries and has around 250,000 employees.