One of Britain’s leading automotive bosses is to become the new chairman of the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership.
Jonathan Browning, who was most recently president and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, is to take over from Sir Peter Rigby - who step will down next month.
Sir Peter, who runs the Rigby Group, announced last year that he would leave the post after guiding the LEP for the last 20 months.
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Mr Browning, who has long-standing family ties in Warwickshire, has held a succession of high-profile global automotive roles. He began his career in sales and marketing at Vauxhall in the 1980s and rose to become executive director of marketing for General Motors Europe.
He took a similar post with Ford before spending two years as the managing director of Jaguar.
He returned to General Motors and then became the chairman of Vauxhall Motors. In his most recent role with the Volkswagen Group he led the rapid growth of their business in the United States.
He spent more than three years in his current role based in Washington leading the Volkswagen business and overseeing the other Group brands Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti.
Mr Browning, who takes up his LEP role in the third week of April, said: “I was looking for challenging and important roles when I return to the 海角视频 and chairman of the CWLEP certainly fits those descriptions.
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"The focus on advanced engineering and manufacturing is an excellent fit with my background. LEPs are an increasingly important tool in the quest for regional and national growth and it is clear that the Coventry and Warwickshire LEP has made great advances under Sir Peter.
“Winning the City Deal was a key achievement and there is clearly a great opportunity in driving forward advanced manufacturing across different sectors. A great deal of solid foundation work has been achieved in the last two years, and now this period of implementation will be key. I am looking forward to the challenge.”
Sir Peter, who took over as chairman in July 2012, said: “Jonathan has experience at a local, national and global level and has all the attributes we were looking for to lead the LEP for the next couple of years.
"We feel he is the ideal choice and we are looking forward to him coming on board at what is a very exciting time for Coventry and Warwickshire.”