FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Parts of the supervisory board at forklift manufacturer Kion will be replaced. The current chairman of the audit committee, Hans Peter Ring, is to become the new chief controller after the annual general meeting on May 17, the MDax group announced in Frankfurt on Thursday. The current Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Michael Macht, intends to retire from the board after four years. The former Porsche AG boss said his other mandates could no longer be reconciled in terms of time with his work on the Kion Supervisory Board.

"The new appointments to the board have been completed in a future-proof manner, and the company has a resilient growth strategy that is proving very effective even in the current phase of geopolitical and economic uncertainties," Macht summed up. Kion has had a difficult year. Among other things, a chief financial officer was missing for months. The boss, Rob Smith, who has only been in office since January 2022, therefore took over departmental responsibility on a transitional basis, while supply chain problems, high energy costs and internal inefficiencies also presented the company with operational problems.

Ring, the new chairman of the supervisory board, has been a member of the Kion board as an independent shareholder representative since mid-2013. He was formerly chief financial officer of Airbus. Nicolas Peter is also to join Kion's supervisory board and take over from Ring as chairman of the audit committee. He is still chief financial officer at BMW, but will relinquish this post in May./lew/jha/