Schneider Electric Removes One CEO, Hires A New One

‘I welcome Olivier Blum as our new CEO and I wish to thank Peter Herweck for leading Schneider Electric over the past 18 months,’ said Schneider Chairman Jean-Pascal Tricoire in a statement.

Schneider Electric’s board of directors voted unanimously to fire Peter Herweck one year and nine months into his role as CEO of the France-based battery and backup giant, telling shareholders that he and the company differed in the correct path forward.

“The board of directors decided to remove from office Peter Herweck as chief executive officer due to divergences in the execution of the company roadmap at a time of significant opportunities,” Schneider Electric wrote in a statement released yesterday. “The board would like to thank Peter Herweck for his role at the helm of Schneider Electric and his dedication to the group that he has led for the last 18 months.”

Attempts to contact Herweck were unsuccessful. Herweck had been the CEO of Aveva, an industrial software company, before it was purchased by Schneider in January 2023.

Schneider Electric moved to immediately appoint Olivier Blum as CEO, a move which the company wrote would “accelerate the execution of its strategy and engage into the next phase of its development.”

“The Governance, Nominations & Sustainablity Committee, under the guidance of the Board of Directors, has conducted a comprehensive process to propose a successor for the role of Chief Executive Officer. Pursuant to this process, the Board has decided to appoint Olivier Blum as Chief Executive Officer,” the company wrote.

At the same time it is going through a CEO transition, Schneider is also investigating a “cybersecurity incident” that it is now investigating. BleepingComputer reported that a threat actor claimed to have stolen Schneider’s data through a compromised server.

“Our Global Incident Response team has been immediately mobilized to respond to the incident,” the company said in the statement, adding that “Schneider Electric’s products and services remain unaffected.”

The statement did not specify when the incident is believed to have occurred or provide further details on the impact. When asked if there was a connection between the leadership change and the cybersecurity investigation, a spokesman told CRN that “there is no relation between the two.”

Blum, a 54-year-old French citizen, has been a member of the 150,000-employee Schneider’s executive committee since 2014.

He began working at Schneider in 1993 in the company’s sales and marketing office in France. He has led several groups within Scheider over the years. Blum was previously group chief strategy and sustainability officer, and chief human resources officer.

He was also named to lead in operational roles, spending five years as Schneider Electric’s country president of Greater India, which is now the company’s third-largest international market.

Additionally, Blum (pictured above) was Schneider’s strategy and business leader in China for five years.

Blum is also on the board of directors for Aveva, which is where Herweck had worked as CEO prior to being tapped to lead Schneider. Herweck was also chairman of the board of Aveva until this month, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“I welcome Olivier Blum as our new CEO and I wish to thank Peter Herweck for leading Schneider Electric over the past 18 months,” Jean-Pascal Tricoire, chairman of Schneider, said according to a statement. “For more than 30 years, Olivier has been an outstanding and transformative leader at Schneider Electric, deeply understanding our business, our operating model and culture and focusing on future technology and strategic development, while delivering strong and consistent operational performance, as shown by the acceleration of Energy Management under his tenure.”

Schneider, traded on the Euronext Paris exchange, has a market cap of about $149 billion.