The Flemish government nominates Ann Schoubs as the new director general of transport company De Lijn. She will succeed Roger Kesteloot there on January 1.
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This morning, four candidates were still in the running, including De Lijn’s current and previous financial director. The choice of the Flemish government ultimately fell on someone from outside the transport company. Schoubs (° 1966) comes from the federal government, where she was head of the internal audit service since 2017.
She comes with years of experience at SNCB, where she worked from 1991 to 2017. She held executive positions there as Chief Information Officer, CEO of the YPTO subsidiary – which has 500 employees – and as Head of Supply Chain.
Crisis time
Roger Kesteloot announced in May that he would leave De Lijn before the end of his term of office. He will remain active within the company until April, among other things to prepare Schoubs for her new task.
Which is not minus. Schoubs comes at the head of De Lijn in a year when travelers a lot have left, for fear of the corona virus. The successive lockdowns also left the company with a huge financial hangover. And even before the virus arrived, things were not going well. 2019 was a particularly difficult year, Kesteloot himself acknowledged, with a peak in the number of canceled journeys and in passenger complaints. Turning that tide in times of crisis will be a tough challenge to say the least.
Moreover, it is currently not even certain whether De Lijn will maintain its monopoly on urban and regional transport in Flanders at all. A benchmark that is currently underway should provide clarity this year.
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