Beijing, December 30 (Reporter Liu Mengyu) The public account "Clean Shanghai" released a message on the afternoon of December 29 that according to the Supervision Committee of the Discipline Inspection Commission of Jiading District of Shanghai, Ren Yun, the former manager of the marketing department of the Skoda brand of SAIC Volkswagen Automobile Co., Ltd., was suspected of serious violations of the law and is currently under supervision and investigation by the Jiading District Supervision Commission.
(WeChat screenshot, sent by CCTV)
According to public information, Ren Yun has been engaged in brand marketing work for SAIC Volkswagen for many years, and has served as the senior director of marketing for the Skoda brand marketing business for the past two years. In July 2021, Ren Yun also attended the Skoda media communication meeting in Hangzhou to promote a certain model of SAIC Volkswagen Skoda brand. It is reported that Ren Yun is already the second SAIC Volkswagen Skoda brand marketing leader to be monitored and investigated this year.
"Folded wing" saic skoda
On April 11, 2005, Shanghai Volkswagen signed a cooperation agreement with Skoda Automobile Company, and the ŠKODA brand, which has been famous in Europe for 100 years, officially settled in Shanghai Volkswagen. In 2007, Skoda began producing and selling cars in China, and launched a cooperation with SAIC Volkswagen to produce the first Skoda Octavia.
In 2016, SAIC Skoda sold more than 300,000 vehicles, and sales have been relatively stable since then. Entering 2020, SAIC Skoda's performance continues to deteriorate. In the same year, SAIC Skoda changed its name to "SAIC Volkswagen Skoda". This move is considered to be a use of Volkswagen's brand power to make Skoda "return the soul". The name change is meaningful, but it is not a cure for the symptoms.
According to statistics, the cumulative sales volume of the SAIC Volkswagen Skoda brand in 2020 was 173,000 units, compared with 282,000 units in 2019, a decrease of nearly 40%. The performance in 2021 was even more dismal, with saicus Skoda's cumulative sales of only about 51,800 units from January to November, of which the monthly sales in November were 7,800 units, a year-on-year decline of 59.59%, and the proportion of market sales shrank to 0.43%.
On May 17, 2021, SAIC Skoda's new Octavia PRO was officially launched. Jia Mingdi, executive deputy general manager of sales and marketing of SAIC Volkswagen and general manager of Shanghai SAIC Volkswagen Sales Co., Ltd., publicly stated that he "hopes that this car can account for 30%-40% of Skoda" and defines it as a powerful weapon for Skoda to play a good brand "turnaround battle" in 2021.
But in fact, according to media reports, the first month of sales of the model was only 1370 vehicles, and the sales volume in June fell to 569 vehicles, even in October of the "Golden Nine Silver Ten", there were only 2145 vehicles, which was not a small gap from the goal of "10,000 Car Club" set by Jia Mingdi.
Today, SAIC Volkswagen Skoda has been far behind its opponents and has almost become a "chicken rib" for SAIC Volkswagen. Based on this, the industry even once reported the news that Skoda disbanded the domestic marketing team. SAIC Volkswagen also responded, calling it "fake news."
Saic Motor Volkswagen calmly in the "anti-corruption storm"
In April 2020, Skoda held an online conference, not only the adjustment of the price of the whole line, but also the brand will bring about a new adjustment in all aspects, including products, marketing and other aspects. The official ŠKODA ID number was also changed to SAIC Volkswagen Skoda.
However, the "renewed" SAIC Volkswagen Skoda has not yet ushered in new development, and has first ushered in an "anti-corruption storm".
According to media reports, in March 2021, Tim Steiskal succeeded Christoph Aringer as executive director of SAIC Volkswagen's Skoda brand marketing business, and together with Xie Jinhui, he was responsible for Skoda's marketing, sales and after-sales work in China. Xie Jinhui is actually the Chinese leader in savoy-Volkswagen Skoda brand marketing.
According to the data, Xie Jinhui joined Shanghai Volkswagen in 2004. In May 2014, Xie Jinhui, then senior manager of product marketing for Shanghai Volkswagen brand, succeeded Liu Jingkang as senior director of brand marketing at Skoda. Xie Jinhui and Jia Mingdi, who is currently the executive deputy general manager of sales and marketing of SAIC Volkswagen and the general manager of Shanghai SAIC Volkswagen Sales Co., Ltd., are both graduates of Tongji University.
Xie Jinhui's name reappeared in the public eye in a circular issued by the Discipline Inspection Commission of Jiading District, Shanghai. The circular said that on October 15, Xie Jinhui, executive director of the Skoda brand marketing business and executive director of the Skoda brand business of SAIC Volkswagen Automobile Co., Ltd., was suspected of serious violations of the law and was subject to supervision and investigation by the Jiading District Supervision Commission.
Before Xie Jinhui's "accident", on July 6, the Supervision Committee of the Discipline Inspection Commission of Jiading District of Shanghai announced that Yang Zhenyu, manager of the Audi brand product management department of SAIC Volkswagen Co., Ltd., was suspected of serious violations of the law and was under supervision and investigation by the Jiading District Supervision Commission.
According to public information, Yang Zhenyu began his career in April 2007, served as the manager of the communication strategy department of the mass brand marketing department from 2016 to 2017, the manager of the marketing department of the mass brand from 2017 to January 2020, and the manager of the audi brand product management department since January 2020.
Yang Zhenyu is also the first anti-corruption incident of SAIC Motor group that has been made public by the Shanghai Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection in recent years. Industry insiders believe that Yang Zhenyu was investigated, breaking SAIC's "silence" in the field of "anti-corruption". This may mean that SAIC Volkswagen's "anti-corruption storm" may have just begun.
In contrast to the "calm" SAIC, in recent years, FAW, Changan, Dongfeng and other auto giants have been deepening their anti-corruption efforts and have maintained a high-pressure situation.
According to the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission, in 2020, FAW Group continued to carry out a special governance "blacklist" in the field of marketing and procurement to deal with 376 partners, cutting off the interest chain of "relying on cars to eat cars".
On April 4, 2021, the official website of the State Supervision Commission of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection released that Yin Jiaxu, former secretary of the party group and chairman of China North Industries Group Co., Ltd., was suspected of serious violations of discipline and laws and is currently under disciplinary review and supervision and investigation by the State Supervision Commission of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
On August 13, 2021, dongfeng motor newspaper reported on the front page that Chen Xi, former vice president and director of the marketing and sales department of Dongfeng Renault Automobile Co., Ltd., was suspected of serious violations of the law and is currently under investigation by the Xianning Municipal Party Committee and has been taken into custody. Also investigated were Qu Gang, former assistant director of the marketing and sales department of Dongfeng Renault Automobile Co., Ltd., and Sun Yiwen, former director of the marketing department of dongfeng Citroen brand department. It is reported that all three have left Dongfeng for five years, but they have not escaped the anti-corruption action set off by Dongfeng Group.
Industry insiders pointed out that SAIC motor is a local state-owned enterprise, and its supervision pressure is much smaller than that of FAW and Dongfeng. However, even in local state-owned enterprises, BAIC and GAC have continued to report "anti-corruption" results, while SAIC motor has been relatively "stable" in the "anti-corruption storm" and has not carried out "real" anti-corruption.
When will the dangerous "rely on enterprises to eat enterprises" take a break
The anti-corruption situation in the automotive industry has always been grim. Due to the long industrial chain and large scale, the automotive industry is easy to become a hotbed of corruption, and almost every year, there are car executives who cannot resist the temptation to fall. In the automotive industry, procurement, sales, advertising, etc. are all areas with a high incidence of corruption.
The three people mentioned in this article, Yang Zhenyu, Xie Jinhui and Ren Yun, who were investigated this year, are all from the marketing positions of SAIC Volkswagen.
In an interview with the Central Broadcasting Network Auto Channel reporter, Chen Yanjiao, director of the Internal Audit Department of Nanjing Audit University, said that surveys of many domestic and foreign companies showed that procurement, engineering, finance and sales ranked in the top four in the "high incidence of fraud". The automotive industry supply chain is long, there are many corrupt links and opportunities, and it is easy to make huge profits in the marketing link, especially the service is difficult to quantify, such as 4S shop sales rely on car company incentives, rebates and other measures, including car maintenance, after-sales and other ways, forming a chain, there may be people who earn improper after-sales profits.
Corrupt practices encroach on the company's development results, weaken the company's competitiveness, and reduce the sense of employee acquisition and trust in the company. At present, many car companies at the operational level, from daily management, to parts procurement, to national channel construction and after-sales service, are hiding the soil of power "rent-seeking".
Chen Yanjiao believes that many of the problems found in the internal audit are traced back to the source of "the problems of executives or leaders". One solution is "rotation of key positions". In addition, fraud has individual fraud and collective fraud, and individual fraud can often be discovered through internal audit, but the loss caused by collective fraud is large and the difficulty of discovery is also extremely difficult. "From a domestic and international perspective, reporting is the most effective measure," Chen Yanjiao stressed, many economic cases and clues to economic problems are found in the internal audit and then transferred to the discipline inspection and supervision organs.
From September 25 to December 20, 2019, the Third Inspection Group of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee inspected the Party Committee of SAIC Motor. In the inspection team's feedback from the party committee of THE SAIC Group, it was pointed out that the party committee of the SAIC Group was not in place to "put the direction, manage the overall situation, and ensure the implementation", and the party's organizational construction and cadre team construction were not solid enough. It is not strong enough to administer the party in an all-round and strict manner, and there are deficiencies in fulfilling the main responsibility and supervision responsibility for improving the party' There are still weak links in risk prevention and control, and integrity risks such as "relying on enterprises to eat enterprises" still exist and are becoming increasingly hidden. Inspection and rectification are not in place and do not see the bottom, and some problems are changed while committing crimes.
For car companies, doing everything possible to prevent loopholes in corruption through system construction should become the top priority of daily management.
On April 6, 2021, SAIC Motor held the 2021 Comprehensive and Strict Party Cadre Conference. The secretary of the party committee and chairman of the board of directors of SAIC Motor Stressed that "more soberly understand the risks and hidden dangers in the group's current operation and management and the weak links in the construction of clean government", and further "strengthen the construction of internal control and strengthen the compliance of clean government".
![SAIC Volkswagen is also another Škoda brand executive under surveillance investigation[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)