Wincor Nixdorf International GmbH has announced a major management change at its United States operations, sparked by the sudden departure of Patrick Wright, the U.S. company’s former CEO.
Jens Bohlen, 48, a member of Wincor Nixdorf International’s executive board of directors who is responsible for the company’s global services business, was named CEO of Wincor Nixdorf Inc., replacing Wright, who held the post for two years.
“When Patrick announced he was leaving for personal reasons, we were able to move quickly to put new management in place,” said Bohlen, who lives in Germany, but has spent a lot of time at Wincor Nixdorf’s U.S. headquarters in Austin, Texas. Wincor Nixdorf named Bohlen to his new position Friday, following a board meeting early last week of the Paderborn, Germany-based company.
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Wright, who joined Wincor Nixdorf from JPMorgan Chase & Co., has left the business. “Patrick Wright has significantly contributed to Wincor Nixdorf’s rapid business development over the past two years,” the company said in a statement.
The ATM manufacturer also named Karlheinz Waffenschmidt, general manager of Wincor Nixdorf Switzerland, chief operating officer of Wincor Nixdorf Inc., succeeding Oliver Weber who also is the company’s chief financial officer. Weber, however, will remain chief financial officer.
“With the company growing in size, we wanted to put the workload on a pair of shoulders,” Bohlen said. Although Bohlen and Waffenschmidt assumed their new roles Friday, company employees were not informed of the change in management until today, he said.
As CEO, Bohlen said he will continue to build up the company’s services and support network to secure another large bank customer. Wincor Nixdorf currently supplies ATMs to Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Inc. Wincor Nixdorf also supplies ATMs to an undisclosed number of smaller banks.
Although Wincor Nixdorf said Wright left the company for person reasons, Gil Luria, vice president of equity research at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, said the change in leadership may be related to “Wincor’s disappointment regarding its ability to extend its success beyond Wells Fargo and Chase.”
Bohlen said the company is moving forward.
“We’re opening a new chapter for Wincor Nixdorf,” he said. “We’re in a growing mode. We want to build up our leadership in consulting and managed services to capture a 10 percent share of the U.S. market. We’re pretty close.”
Bohlen’s strategy is to grow the company’s business by expanding its services and support network. In the last year, Wincor Nixdorf has doubled the number of its in-house service and support employees to 600 technicians by moving employees from the company’s headquarters in Paderborn, Germany, and other parts of the world, to the United States, Bohlen said. The company has hired the majority of its technicians from the United States.
He said he wants to offer bank customers “high-level services,” such as remote ATM management, software consulting and software customizing. Last week, Wincor Nixdorf announced that it had expanded its service and support network, and it now serves 49 of the top 50 metropolitan areas in the U.S.
By offering high-level services, Bohlen said, Wincor Nixdorf will be able to continue the company’s growth.
During the first nine months of its 2010 fiscal year, Wincor Nixdorf reported a 61 percent increase in revenues in the Americas, which includes the United States, Canada, Latin America and South America, compared with the same period last year, he said. “Most of the growth came from the United States,” Bohlen said. Wincor Nixdorf’s 2011 fiscal year began October 1.
The decision to emphasize services reflects the “high importance that Wincor Nixdorf attaches to the growth and expansion of its business activities in the U.S. market,” the company said.
