Dr. Michael Leiters
Chairman of the Executive Board
2026 – Present
0 years (current)
Key Decisions & Impact
Leiters worked at Porsche from 2000 to 2013 in senior engineering roles, including responsibility for the Cayenne and Macan programs and early hybrid development, then became Ferrari's Chief Technical Officer for more than eight years, helping develop hybrid halo cars like the SF90 and 296 GTB, before serving as CEO of McLaren Automotive from July 2022 to April 2025. He returned to Porsche as CEO effective January 1, 2026, ending Oliver Blume's decade running both Porsche and Volkswagen Group simultaneously.
Legacy
Leiters inherited a company in crisis -- 2025 operating profit had just collapsed 92.7% to EUR413 million after an EUR3.9 billion EV-strategy writedown -- and has been tasked with the reset: extending combustion-engine models, slowing the EV transition, and rebuilding profitability in China and the US, drawing on his hybrid and SUV-platform experience from Ferrari, McLaren, and his earlier Porsche tenure. His prior turnaround experience at McLaren, a much smaller company facing its own financial pressures, gave the Porsche supervisory board confidence in his crisis-management capability specifically, not just his product expertise.