Sixt Management

Investments
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Sixt CMO Tobias Seitz left the company after 32 months. He joined in 2022 from Westwing.

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  • Dr. Nils HĂźske was elevated to Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) starting in May 2024, replacing James Adams who left in early 2024.
  • HĂźske joined Sixt in 2022 as a Senior Vice President Strategy and Chief of Staff, a position he held until his elevation as CCO.
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@Aron any trends on the cultural front (re-checking current reviews etc.)? Do we have indications that the situation got better, worse or stayed very much the same since we last discussed the topic? Which are those indications?

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There are no recent C-level management changes or media reports on the company’s culture.

Reviews from Germany employees are still negative with recurring criticisms about management style, understaffing, and lack of work-life balance while reviews from US employees are still slightly positive (Notion).

In a July 2025 interview, Friederike Reichenberger, President of People & Culture at SIXT described their culture as high-performance, where employees are expected to have “hunger to win,” passion, and the fire to succeed. She said that in 2023, they undertook a two-year project to redefine the company’s culture and they came up with “The Big Six” values: customer excitement above all, Team Orange loves to win, show results, love what you do, love challenges, and identity/pride in being Sixt. This replaced fragmented, less consistent values that were not fully lived across the company (min 8:16-17:33).

She pointed out that in June 2025, they came up with AI-powered real-time and anonymous employee surveys which give management instant insight into morale and challenges (with more than 70% participation so far). They also use this score to evaluate the behavior of managers (min 21:16 – 23:43).

Frederike also describes the company as “ordered chaos”: anti-bureaucracy, fast-moving, entrepreneurial, with a “Bureaucracy Button” that employees can press when processes become too rigid (min 5:02).

She also talks about the importance of internal promotion and development (management trainees) and their employee evaluation model: Keep Growing, Develop, Thrive, Accelerate, which is designed to motivate employees and provide clarity on development opportunities.

Overall, I believe the negative reviews mainly reflect the company’s high-performance culture, and the redesigned culture may help address some of the issues raised by employees, such as toxic management.

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Good find of the interview. Thanks for the summary of key insights incl. timestamps.

What she says sounds certainly nice on paper.

I think a high performance culture is certainly not for everyone and that can lead to some negative reviews without being indicative of what is going on inside the company or without being a definitive negative indicator.

Nevertheless: Is your impression that reviews improved over the last couple of months, stayed roughly the same or got worse? (And if it got worse only slightly or strongly)

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I think it got slightly worse in Germany. Last time, it wasn’t hard to see positive reviews at Kununu.com compared to today.

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I=5
Sixt promoted Eliah Werner as Vice President Brand

  • Sixt recently promoted Eliah Werner as Vice President Brand, replacing Robin Ruschke, who left Sixt in October 2024 for Lidl.
  • Werner joined the company in 2022 as Senior Director Brand.
  • In his new position, Werner will take on sponsorship, content creation, airport marketing, market research, and global media, while continuing to oversee his current areas of responsibility such as OEM marketing, social media, global campaigns, and brand strategy and design.
  • Werner will continue to report directly to co-CEO Konstantin Sixt.
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I=4
Newly appointed Vice President of Brand praises Sixt’s high-speed culture

  • Eliah Wernerx, Sixt’s new Vice President of Brand describes Alexander and Konstantin Sixt as demanding yet empowering leaders who inspire a culture rooted in speed, courage, and bold non-conformity.

  • He emphasized on the company’s high-performance culture.

    “Speed ​​isn’t a buzzword at Sixt , but rather a part of everyday life,” he said.

  • He said Sixt now reaches 700,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram.

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I=5
Nadine W. B. Aufermann, vice president of compliance and integrity left Sixt on June 2025

  • She joined Viessmann Generations Group as their new Chief Compliance Officer.

Assessment
Overall, senior executive turnover has been low in 2025 following elevated churn in 2023–2024. While employee reviews remain largely negative, criticism now focuses mainly on high pressure and understaffing rather than widespread turnover (Notion-Sixt management style and culture). The persistent intensity appears consistent with Sixt’s high-performance culture rather than a new deterioration.

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