Paolo Pompei talks with T&A 1 year after Yokohama TWS acquisition

Roughly a year since our last interview, which focused on how Trelleborg Wheels Systems had been operating since the company’s acquisition by Yokohama, Tyres & Accessories visited the company’s Tivoli, Italy headquarters in order to meet up with Yokohama TWS chief executive Paolo Pompei and to find out more about what has happened in the first year of post-integration business. In the days following our visit, we learnt that Yokohama had agreed to buy Goodyear OTR and that Paolo Pompei has accepted the top job at Nokian Tyres – both headline-grabbing stories that make the timing of our interview all the more prescient. Specifically, Pompei’s description of how the various Yokohama off-highway businesses (ATG, TWS and Aichi – all of which were, of course acquisitions themselves) operate both semi-autonomously and together potentially provides an insight into how the newly-acquired Goodyear OTR operation may be integrated into the Yokohama stable.