​Today marks the beginning of a new era for HELLA and Faurecia. HELLA CEO Dr. Rolf Breidenbach explains in a letter to employees what will remain the same, what will change and what the future company name will be.

Monday 2022-02-07

Dear Colleagues,

​These days we are opening a new chapter in our corporate history: since last week, Faurecia has been HELLA's new majority shareholder with a stake of around 80 percent. This is good news for HELLA. Together with Faurecia, we are the seventh largest automotive supplier worldwide. Together, we can serve the needs of our customers and the regions even better. Together, we cover high-growth technology fields. Together, we share a similar culture and value base. These are all excellent prerequisites for continuing our success story.

Based on the current ownership structure, Faurecia and HELLA will continue to be managed as independent entities with their own management teams. For most employees at HELLA, therefore, nothing significant will change. Nevertheless, this constellation now allows us to realize all the opportunities we identified in advance: together with Faurecia, for example, we can achieve numerous synergies, open up new sales opportunities and thus further strengthen our competitiveness.

Day One: Start into a common future

The ground is thus prepared for a successful future. For us, this is a reason to rejoice. That is why we are celebrating the so-called "Day One" of our cooperation with Faurecia today. In this context, the international management circle of both companies was informed this morning during a live digital event. In it we not just looked back on the past weeks and months but also gave an outlook on our common future. I cordially invite you to follow this event. A recording is expected to be freely available to all employees on the HELLA intranet as of noon Central European Time today.

The fact that we have reached today's milestone, which is so important for us, is due to the high level of commitment and exemplary team spirit of many colleagues. Numerous decisions and legal requirements for the cooperation had to be made with the utmost care within a very short period of time. It was a truly mammoth task and, above all, team effort, which once again makes it clear that there is a united team behind Project ONE - from HELLA and Faurecia. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those involved.

Central course set for the future

As a result of this united team performance, we have now been able to achieve important targets: First of all, the transaction was completed at the beginning of last week. On Friday, the HELLA Shareholder Committee was subsequently reappointed. Representatives of Faurecia have joined the committee in place of the four previous family members. In addition, ground-breaking decisions were already made at the first meeting:

First, we will further develop our organizational setup by forming three business groups at HELLA: Lighting, Electronics and Lifecycle Solutions. Under the last business group, we will combine our Aftermarket and Special Applications business segments. In the future, the divisions will have more autonomy by largely integrating certain central functions such as controlling and human resources into the individual business groups. In this way, we aim to further increase our agility and at the same time align our structures with those of Faurecia.

Secondly, we will deepen our cooperation with Faurecia in selected focus areas and further increase our competitiveness. We will realize significant synergies above all by pooling our purchasing activities. We also want to derive advantages from the fact that we will be selling Faurecia products through our aftermarket network in the future. There are also many other areas in which we want to create additional benefits for HELLA through closer cooperation and the exchange of best practices, including IT, production and digitalization.

FORVIA: The connecting bond between HELLA and Faurecia

In addition, HELLA and Faurecia will operate under a new, overarching name in the future. It is intended to express the close alliance between the two companies - both internally and externally. At the same time, it is intended to be a signal of new beginnings, without misjudging the roots of both companies. The name is thus also intended to sum up aspects that have distinguished HELLA and Faurecia for years - such as dynamism, vision, passion, solution orientation, customer proximity and a sense of community. In short: FORVIA.

As with any name creation, you have to let it sink in first. I would therefore like to invite you to be inspired by the FORVIA brand video, which will be available on the intranet from noon today. The HELLA name will not disappear, by the way. In particular, it will continue to be used at the product level, especially in the aftermarket. At the corporate level, too, HELLA will accompany us for the time being; and in the future in combination with the overarching umbrella brand FORVIA - the new identity-creating, connecting bond between HELLA and Faurecia.

FORVIA is intended to symbolize the start of a common future. It is also clear that not every detail of the cooperation between HELLA and Faurecia will have been clarified by today's Day One. That is in the nature of things with a project of this complexity. Many agreements were not even possible before the transaction was completed due to legal restrictions, for example regarding the transparent exchange of information with Faurecia. This is now becoming easier, although there are still many constraints to consider. We will therefore continue to keep you up to date.

The path to a successful future has been prepared, and one of my most important concerns has been completed.

With Faurecia as HELLA's new majority shareholder, we have laid the foundations for a successful future. This paves the way for HELLA's successful future. Preparing the cooperation with Faurecia has been a major concern for me in recent months. This milestone has now been reached. Against this background, I have agreed with HELLA's Shareholder Committee to terminate my management contract as of 30 June 2022, and to transfer responsibility for managing the company to other hands. After more than 18 years at the helm of this company, this decision was not easy for me. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the shareholders and committees of the company, to my colleagues on the Management Board and, above all, to you, my more than 36,000 HELLA colleagues worldwide, for the fact that I have been able to share responsibility for HELLA's fortunes for so long. I am therefore pleased that I can continue to work with you on the integration with Faurecia until I leave the company and that I can continue to support the de facto group of HELLA and Faurecia in an advisory capacity.

Dear colleagues, today's Day One marks the beginning of a new era for HELLA and Faurecia. Both companies were already strong before, together we are now even stronger. The two companies thus bring together a total of around 150,000 employees, over 150 nationalities, at more than 350 locations around the globe - with a common goal: to design mobility that is comfortable, safe and, above all, sustainable.

Best regards

Rolf Breidenbach

By the way, do you have any questions for me? Feel free to submit them directly to me via the Ask the CEO portal on the intranet. I will try to answer each question to the best of my ability.