DAIMLER AG’s chief executive officer Ola Kallenius is poised to face critical questions at his first annual general meeting since taking over the German carmaker, with the coronavirus pandemic having disrupted plans to restructure and revive returns.

A string of profit warnings, several of which predated COVID-19, exposed misguided investments and the vulnerability of Daimler’s business, Deka Investment GmbH said ahead of the gathering today.

“We look back at a lost year for Daimler,” Ingo Speich, Deka’s head of sustainability and corporate governance, said in prepared remarks.

While Speich supports Kallenius’s cost-cutting and focus on cash generation, he said the CEO carries some responsibility for Daimler’s woes because he served as development chief under his predecessor Dieter Zetsche.

Kallenius, who took over Daimler’s top job in May 2019, has warned the maker of Mercedes-Benz cars and its peers will be forced to make deeper cutbacks to overcome the economic fallout from the pandemic.

While Daimler, Volkswagen AG and BMW AG brace for second-quarter losses after the virus shuttered factories and showrooms, electric-car leader Tesla Inc. shrugged off the slump to become the world’s most valuable automaker this month.

Daimler shares have declined 24 percent this year, giving the Stuttgart-based manufacturer a market capitalization of about 40 billion euros (US$45 billion), less than a fifth of Tesla’s valuation.

(SD-Agencies)