Progress-Werk Oberkirch AG announced that the Chief Executive Officer, Karl M. Schmidhuber, will leave the Management Board of the company and retire upon the adjournment of the annual general meeting on May 21, 2014. The company's Supervisory Board has appointed Dr. Ing. Volker Simon as his successor.

He will join the Management Board of PWO AG no later than July 1, 2014. Dr. Simon will assume responsibility for the Market and Technology areas and accept the role of Speaker of the Management Board. Karl M. Schmidhuber, who was fully involved by the Supervisory Board in the search for his successor, as well as the entire Supervisory Board, are confident that Dr. Volker Simon with his long-standing experience in the automotive industry, will ensure business continuity aligned with the market and technology-oriented direction important to the Company, but also set the priorities necessary in the future for the increasingly dynamic development of the market environment.

In addition to management responsibilities in development and production, in the past 10 years, Dr. Simon has held senior positions in international sales and most recently in the management board of Isringhausen, where he was instrumental in the company's progression to its current market position.