BMW Group Creates Two New Divisions

Munich - As part of the company's strategic realignment, the BMW Group will create two new divisions as of October 1, 2007. The new division Corporate and Brand Development, will be headed by our former director of corporate planning, Dr. Friedrich Eichiner. The move underlines the importance of corporate planning, brand management and strategic implementation at the BMW Group. The division will also be home to BMW Motorrad, Financial Services and Softlab. If new business units are created, they will be assigned to this division.

The second new division will be Purchasing and Supplier Network. Dr. Herbert Diess, up to now in charge of BMW Motorrad, will be head of this division. This division will primarily be responsible for lowering material costs, the Group's major expense factor. This corresponds to the BMW Group's strategic approach of optimizing the interface between the BMW Group and its supplier network and redefining the share of in-house activities in relation to our strategically relevant technologies.

The BMW Group's basic organizational structure has remained mostly unchanged since 2000. Due to the new strategy, however, complexity of tasks is expected to increase considerably. This means that all divisions will have to shoulder significantly more challenging workloads. "Strategy implementation requires a high-performance organization capable of handling the complexity of our activities and generating growth," stated Dr. Norbert Reithofer, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG, at a press conference on Thursday.

In conjunction with implementing the strategy, the BMW Group decided to make a castling move, with Dr. Michael Ganal and Stefan Krause taking on each other's current responsibilities as of October 1. Michael Ganal will be in charge of Finance, while Stefan Krause will be responsible for Marketing and Sales. "We want our executives to be global thinkers, highly skilled and able to apply their expertise in various areas throughout the Group," Reithofer stated. "Both colleagues have done an excellent job for years. They are now going to give fresh input to their new divisions by sharing their vast experience in leading their respective teams."

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