NEWS RELEASES
Thor Founder Peter Orthwein Steps Down From Executive Chair Post
Editor's Note: This news item was retrieved and first published through the Thor Industries website.
ELKHART, Ind. - Peter Orthwein, Thor Industries' co-founder and Executive Chairman, announced he will step down on July 31, 2019, the end of the company’s fiscal year. He’ll be transitioning to Chairman Emeritus at Thor and will remain an active member of the Board of Directors. Thor plans to announce its new Chairman before the end of its fiscal year.
Orthwein and partner Wade Thompson founded Thor in 1980 with the purchase of the then struggling company, Airstream. Thor went public in 1984, one of a very few publicly traded companies in existence for nearly forty years, and has posted a profit annually. Through the years, Orthwein served Thor in various roles including CEO and Chairman, piloting the company to iconic status and revolutionizing the RV industry. As the primary architect of Thor's strategic growth strategy, Orthwein took the company in five years from sales of $3.3 billion and $180 million net earnings in 2012 to Fortune 500 status with revenues of $8.3 billion and net earnings of $633 million in Fiscal Year 2018. A member of the industry's Hall of Fame, Orthwein led this year's acquisition of the Erwin Hymer Group, one of Europe's most prominent RV manufacturers, making Thor the largest RV manufacturer in the world. Currently Thor's family of companies employs nearly 25,000 people in the US and Europe.
For additional information, visit the Thor Industries website.