BMW Group has appointed Nathanaëlle Heinrich as the new President and CEO of BMW Group Belux, effective from 1 September 2026. She succeeds Alexander Wehr, who moves on to lead BMW Group Central and South-Eastern Europe from Salzburg.
The move brings a sales and dealer-network specialist to one of BMW’s most commercially significant European national organizations. Belgium and Luxembourg may be small markets in absolute size, but BMW Group Belux carries unusual weight within the company’s European sales network.
Best-selling new passenger-car brand
BMW has been Belgium’s best-selling new passenger-car brand for five consecutive calendar years, from 2021 to 2025, ahead of Volkswagen each time. The organization is also deeply embedded in the country’s influential company-car and fleet market, where electrification, leasing, and retail transformation increasingly converge.
BMW Group Belux was established in 1973 as BMW’s first foreign subsidiary after France and is now preparing a new €30 million campus in Bornem.
By 2027, the site is expected to bring together around 600 employees from BMW Group Belux, BMW Financial Services, and Alphabet Belgium. That gives the CEO role a broader remit than simply selling BMW and MINI cars, spanning dealer relations, fleet customers, financing, and the shift towards new forms of retail.
BMW Motorrad
Heinrich arrives with more than two decades of experience within BMW Group, almost entirely in commercial positions. She began in Munich in 2005 in BMW product management before moving to BMW Group France as a marketing specialist for BMW Motorrad.
Her subsequent career covered several sides of the business. She worked as a regional representative and BMW-MINI key account manager, led BMW Motorrad sales, and became BMW’s Regional Sales Director for northern France in 2017. In 2019, she joined the executive committee of BMW Group France as head of BMW Motorrad France.
That experience also has a Belgian angle. BMW Motorrad registered 3,392 new motorcycles in Belgium in 2025, making it the country’s second-largest motorcycle brand.
In France, Heinrich led the division during a period of strong growth, with BMW Motorrad reaching 20,333 registrations in 2021, a record at the time, and taking a 10.5% share of the over-125cc market.
Three years later, she took charge of BMW sales and dealer development in France. That last role gives her a particularly relevant background for Belgium and Luxembourg.
Dealer structures are being reshaped by agency-style distribution models, while the transition to electric models makes control of customer relationships, pricing, and fleet business more important than ever.
BMW Group France credited Heinrich with contributing to a period in which BMW sales reached a record high, rising 46% between 2021 and 2024.
The company also said BMW had become the leader of France’s premium segment during that period. Heinrich left the French sales organization in October 2025 for new responsibilities at BMW Group headquarters in Munich, before being selected for the Belux top job.
A graduate of EM Strasbourg Business School and the University of Mannheim, Heinrich speaks French, English, and German fluently. Her cross-border experience should fit a Belgian-Luxembourg operation that combines different language areas, customer profiles, and dealer cultures.
Stepping stone within BMW Group
She replaces Alexander Wehr, who has led BMW Group Belux since June 2022. During his tenure, BMW reaffirmed its number-one market position in Belgium for a fifth consecutive year, MINI completed its transition to the agency model, and construction began on the new Bornem campus.
Wehr is a long-serving BMW executive with close to three decades at the group. He joined in 1997 as product manager for the BMW Z8, before holding positions in corporate and product strategy, European used-car sales, worldwide volume planning, and sales steering.
He also served as President and CEO of BMW Group Latin America, with responsibility for key markets including Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, and later headed customer, brand, and sales activities at BMW Motorrad.
His new Central and South-Eastern Europe role covers a 12-country region, underlining that the Belux assignment has been a significant stepping stone within BMW’s international management structure.
For Heinrich, the challenge is to maintain BMW’s rare leadership position in Belgium while guiding the business through a crucial period for the premium market.
Notably, the arrival of the Neue Klasse generation, a more electric fleet market, changing dealer economics, and increasingly direct customer relationships. In that sense, BMW Group Belux may be geographically compact, but it is one of the group’s most strategically revealing markets in Europe.
