News & Releases

Erich Sixt to resign from Management Board and join Supervisory Board of Sixt SE in June 2021 – Supervisory Board appoints Alexander and Konstantin Sixt to succeed him as joint Chairmen of the Board and Co-CEOs on the Group Management Board, thus focusing on strategic continuity, international growth and digitalization
  • At the age of 76 and after more than 50 years at the helm of the company, during which he has led SIXT from being a local car rental company to become one of the world’s leading premium mobility providers with sales of more than EUR 3.3 billion, CEO Erich Sixt will resign from his position on the Management Board after the Annual General Meeting on June 16 of this year. He will be handing over the Group’s management to Alexander and Konstantin Sixt and join the Supervisory Board of Sixt SE, where he plans to serve as its Chairman.
  • The future Co-CEOs and previous members of the Management Board Alexander and Konstantin Sixt together bring nearly 30 years of strategic and operational experience working for the SIXT Group. Among their many achievements, they have played a key role in shaping the company’s success, growth and transformation story by founding and successfully exiting from DriveNow, the exponential increase in sales through the expansion of business customer sales and the e-commerce business, the IPO and sale of Sixt Leasing SE, the launch of the ONE mobility platform with the new SIXT share, SIXT ride and SIXT+ products and, last but not least, through their successful crisis management during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Alexander and Konstantin Sixt: “We are facing up to this challenge with a great sense of joy and determination, but also with deep humility, gratitude and respect for the life’s work of Erich Sixt, as well as for our responsibility to our employees.”

Pullach, March 1, 2021 – The longstanding CEO of SIXT SE, Erich Sixt, will resign from the Management Board after the company’s Annual General Meeting on June 16, 2021, at the age of 76, and, subject to the approval of the Annual General Meeting, will join the Supervisory Board of Sixt SE, where he will assume the position of Chairman, provided the Supervisory Board gives its consent. Alexander and Konstantin Sixt, who have already been members of the Management Board since 2015, will succeed Erich Sixt on the Management Board and have been appointed joint Chairmen of the Board and Co-CEOs with effect from June 17, 2021. This was decided by the Supervisory Board of Sixt SE at its meeting today. The division of responsibilities on the Management Board will remain unaffected.

Full-blooded entrepreneur, mobility pioneer and global player
For more than 50 years, mobility pioneer Erich Sixt, now 76, managed the company and, together with his wife Regine Sixt, initially built it up from being a local Munich-based car rental company, which he took over from his father in 1969 in the third generation, to become the market leader in Germany. SIXT is now one of the world’s leading, most innovative and profitable mobility service providers, with more than 250,000 vehicles, more than EUR 3.3 billion in sales (2019) and 8,500 employees in Germany and abroad. The company is present in around 110 countries worldwide. In particular, in the past ten years before the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Group rushed from record year to record year under his leadership.

Long-term drivers of success with a focus on continuity and digitalization
Alexander (41) and Konstantin Sixt (38) joined the Group in 2009 and 2005, respectively, and were appointed to the Management Board in 2015. In 2009, the company entered an exponential growth phase, which continued uninterrupted until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic: During this period, for example, SIXT doubled its sales from EUR 1.6 billion to EUR 3.3 billion, more than twenty-fold its profit (EBT) from EUR 15.1 million to EUR 337.4 million and increased its market capitalization eight-fold from EUR 0.5 billion to EUR 3.8 billion.

Alexander Sixt, the Management Board member responsible for Group Strategy/M&A, SIXT TECH, Purchasing and Human Resources, had already laid the foundation for the new mobility services at SIXT in 2011, among other things, and together with BMW built up the DriveNow joint venture into a profitable car-sharing provider in Europe. When SIXT, led by Alexander Sixt, sold its share in it, DriveNow’s company valuation totaled EUR 420 million. Alexander Sixt was also responsible for the restructuring of Sixt Leasing SE in 2010, the spin-off by way of an IPO in 2015, and the successful sale of the share of approx. 41.9% in Sixt Leasing SE that was initially retained after the IPO to Santander and Hyundai in 2020, among his other achievements. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, he took over the management of the Group’s crisis and cost management program “Phoenix.” This enabled SIXT to achieve cost savings of almost EUR 600 million and even generate a slight pre-tax profit (EBT) of EUR 7.3 million in its annual results in Europe, despite the significant pandemic-related drop in demand.

Konstantin Sixt has been responsible for SIXT’s sales as Chief Sales Officer (CSO) since 2015. Due to the consistent and successful expansion of global business customer sales, the further development of the product portfolio including many innovations, as well as the intensive expansion of digital sales channels, the operating sales revenues of the Mobility division increased by 64% since 2015 to EUR 2.49 billion in 2019 with an international share of 61%. The share of digital reservations via online & mobile increased to 70% in 2019.

Konstantin and Alexander Sixt are already jointly driving the SIXT TECH division, which bundles all of the Group’s digitalization initiatives. The global mobility platform SIXT ONE, in which the company brought together its entire product portfolio in digital form in 2019, is at the heart of SIXT TECH. Since then, the company has offered a global, integrated platform for car rental, car sharing, and cab and ride services via the SIXT app. In the summer of 2020, the offering was complemented by the car subscription product SIXT+, which has now already been rolled out in eight countries including the US. By the end of 2019, the new SIXT ONE platform recorded around EUR 2 million in sales per day.

Friedrich Joussen, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Sixt SE:
“With the appointment of Alexander and Konstantin Sixt as future joint Chairmen of the Board and Co-CEOs of Sixt SE, the Supervisory Board is following the clear mandate to recruit the best candidates for the future of the company for this responsible management role. Alexander and Konstantin Sixt have impressively demonstrated more than once in recent years that they are ideally suited and qualified for this task. Together with the personnel changes on the Management Board in recent weeks, we believe that the Management Board is thus ideally positioned to meet the challenges of the future. I have always considered the most important task of my office as Chairman of the Supervisory Board to accompany the succession of Erich Sixt. In fulfilling this task, I will be stepping down from the Supervisory Board at the end of this year’s Annual General Meeting. On behalf of the entire Supervisory Board, I would like to thank Erich Sixt for his many years of trusting cooperation. It has been a great pleasure for all of us to work with such an outstanding and charismatic entrepreneurial personality.”

Erich Sixt, Chairman of the Management Board of Sixt SE:
“Over the past few years, Alexander and Konstantin have shown through their hard work, energy and passion as well as their impressive successes that they are prepared – even in economically challenging times – to fight for this company and to lead it successfully into the future. SIXT has repeatedly proven its immense will to grow and succeed over the past years and decades and has thus developed to its current size and market strength. However, no entrepreneur can write such a success story alone; it is a tremendous team effort spanning decades. With this in mind, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my wife Regine, to my colleagues on the Management Board, and above all to the entire SIXT workforce around the globe for their joint efforts in recent years. You have all made SIXT the successful global Group it is today! On behalf of the entire Management Board, I would also like to express my sincere thanks to Mr. Joussen for the excellent, always very constructive and trusting cooperation, which we all greatly appreciate.”

Alexander and Konstantin Sixt, Members of the Management Board of Sixt SE:
“We would like to express our sincere thanks for the trust placed in us. We are facing up to this challenge with a great sense of joy and determination, but also with deep humility, gratitude, and respect for the life’s work of our father Erich Sixt and our mother Regine Sixt, as well as for our responsibility to our employees. We would like to thank in particular our employees who have accompanied us over the last fifteen years and made SIXT what it is today. Strategic continuity coupled with the will to grow and innovate that is so typical of SIXT are of the greatest importance to us. In this spirit, we will consistently pursue our international expansion and digitalization course and continue to pursue our premium strategy.”

About SIXT
Sixt SE with its registered office in Pullach near Munich, is a leading international provider of high-quality mobility services. With its products SIXT rent, SIXT share, SIXT ride and SIXT+ the company offers a uniquely integrated mobility service across the fields of vehicle and commercial vehicle rental, car sharing, chauffeur services and car subscriptions. The products can be booked through one single app, which also integrates the services of its renowned mobility partners. SIXT has a presence in around 110 countries around the globe. The company is characterized by consistent customer orientation, a lived culture of innovation with strong technological expertise, the high share of premium vehicles in its fleet and an attractive price-performance ratio. The SIXT Group generated revenue of EUR 3.31 billion in 2019 and ranks as one of the most profitable mobility companies worldwide. Sixt SE is the parent company of the Group and has been listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange since 1986 (ISIN ordinary share: DE0007231326, ISIN preference share: DE0007231334).

https://about.sixt.com

Press contact
Sixt SE
Kathrin Greven
Sixt Central Press Office
Tel.: +49 – (0)89 – 74444 6700
E-mail: pressrelations@sixt.com