In his first meeting with the press since he became managing director of Siemens-Nixdorf Espana last April, Belarmino Garcia forecast an imminent return to profit for the Spanish subsidiary, which has accumulated losses of $102m over the last three years. It is my intention to place Siemens Nixdorf Espana among the top three companies in the sector by the end of the decade, Garcia declared. Since April, Garcia, who was previously director of the computer systems division at Hewlett-Packard Espanola, has been looking long and hard at the company’s position in the Spanish market, and he promised to unveil a new operating model in October of this year. He said that the areas of marketing and logistics needed some reinforcement and that there would be changes in the subsidiary’s distribution policy; he reckons that doing its own distribution in the personal computer segment makes no sense: it is to be abandoned, and the company is currently negotiating agreements with some of the country’s strongest distributors. Without wishing to flesh out his plans for the new structure of Siemens-Nixdorf in Spain, Garcia commented that new management blood may be required in areas where the company lacks sufficient internal know-how, but he denied that he would be recruiting professionals from Hewlett-Packard for this purpose. With respect to his former company, he observed that of course Hewlett-Packard has an operating model that works, but this is the model towards which most co mpanies in the sector are now tending. Garcia also refuted suggestions that his plans included staff cuts. In fiscal 1995 Siemens-Nixdorf regained stability in Spain, doubling its turnover to top $275.4m, but losses of $2.5m were nonetheless reported. This year, Garcia is confident that the Madrid-based subsidiary of the German company will be announcing its first profits since back in fiscal 1992.
