Ricardo Lessmann announced that as of next June 30, his resignation, presented at the beginning of 2024, will be effective from the boards he has held until now in the Gildemeister group.
Lessmann first worked as an executive at that company and in 1986, after a trip to Seoul, he won the representation of the Korean brand Hyundai for Chile. That’s where the company was born. In the 90s, the group stopped selling these vehicles, so Lessmann became independent and began importing them directly. The bet worked successfully for two decades, until the middle of the last decade, when he began to have problems with over-indebtedness, accelerated by his entry into Brazil and the representation of the Indian brand Mahindra, which even led him to close a factory in that country. . In 2015 he had to restructure his businesses to move forward.
But the social outbreak and the pandemic sank it. In April 2021, Gildemeister Automobile filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United Stateswhere the debts were converted into company shares and the creditors took control and Lessmann would even have completely left the property. Gildemeister then had debts of US$ 566 million and its largest creditor was the American fund manager Elliot, who took control. which until then had been held by the Lessmann, Puntous Gildemeister and Baumann families. The company then had a network of 228 sales branches, 70 of which were owned and 158 franchised.
However, to make the company viable, in this process an agreement was reached with Hyundai to continue representing the brand in Chile and other Latin American countries, and The South Koreans made it a condition that Lessmann would remain with the company for a while. In this way, the Chilean businessman remained president of the group’s board of directors and some subsidiaries.
As of this weekend, he will no longer be the president of Automotores Gildemeister Perú and of Gildemeister’s parent company in the United States, and director of the Amicar car loan platform.
In the statement informing of his decision, Lessmann thanked “all those who collaborated with the development of the automotive group” and said that he will now “dedicate himself to his personal activities and businesses.”
According to his LinkedIn profile, Lessmann was president and CEO of Gildemeister for 32 years. (between 1991 and 2023) and currently serves as executive president (CEO) of NovaGroup-Chile, importer of accessory, gardening and camping brands whose general manager is his son Sebastián Lessmann.
Last April, Lessmann’s sons, Sebastián, Eugenio and Cristóbal, announced that they will follow in their father’s footsteps in the motor business, as they will represent the historic Italian motorcycle brand Morbidelli in Chile starting in the second half of 2024.
