Geely puts the architect of Zeekr in charge as it eyes doubling its footprint across Europe

Geely wants to sell 600,000 cars a year in Europe within the next two to three years, roughly double what the Chinese group currently manages on the continent. That target says a lot about why the company just handed the top job at Geely Automobile Holdings to the person who built Zeekr into a serious international brand in the first place.

A leadership change built around international experience

From 18 August 2026, An Conghui, 56, takes over as president of Geely Automobile Holdings, stepping into the role held by founder Li Shufu since he built the company from a small Chinese manufacturer into a genuinely global car empire. An Conghui already runs the wider Geely holding company as chief executive and is widely credited as the driving force behind Zeekr’s rise, a background that lines up neatly with where Geely says it wants to go next: two thirds of sales coming from outside China.

Li isn’t stepping away entirely, though. He keeps the chairmanship of parent company Zhejiang Geely Holding and remains Geely Auto’s controlling shareholder, meaning strategic decisions still ultimately run through him, alongside international assets held outside Geely Auto itself, including the group’s stake in Mercedes-Benz. Geely has also swapped chief executives at the same time, with Gan Jiayue replacing Gui Shengyue, who moves into a vice chairman role. The company is framing the whole reshuffle under a banner called “One Geely”, described as a shift away from family led management toward professional executives running the business day to day.

Export growth is quietly doing the heavy lifting

The leadership change lands alongside half year results that tell a more nuanced story than a single headline number suggests. Net profit for the first six months fell 1.8 percent to 9.09 billion yuan, roughly 1.1 billion euros. Narrow the view to the second quarter alone, though, and profit actually jumped 36 percent to 4.9 billion yuan, on record revenue.

The real engine behind that turnaround is exports, which more than doubled over the half year to 474,228 cars, offsetting a domestic market that’s cooling noticeably. Car sales inside China fell 20 percent over the same period, with slowing demand for electric cars specifically pushing the group to lean harder into markets abroad.

Geely European brands span far more than most buyers realise

This is where the story becomes directly relevant to European roads. Geely has built the deepest European footprint of any Chinese automotive group, owning or controlling a genuinely wide spread of familiar names.

What sets Geely apart from other Chinese groups expanding abroad is that it has largely left acquired brands where it found them, keeping headquarters and design work in Europe rather than pulling engineering back to China. Volvo remains the clearest example, with Geely holding 78 percent of the Swedish carmaker while its design and development stay firmly rooted in Gothenburg.

Geely-Ford Spain partnership signals how the growth will actually happen

Rather than building new factories from the ground up, Geely is leaning on partnerships to hit its European targets. The group has struck a deal with Ford to build electric SUVs at Ford’s Spanish plant and jointly develop a model specifically for the European market. Volvo’s own factories are also being opened up to produce premium models for other brands within the Geely group, in particulare Zeekr (the fastest-growing brand of the group) and Lynk & Co.

For European buyers, the practical result is likely to be more Geely group vehicles arriving over the next few years, frequently wearing a badge that already feels familiar on European roads rather than an unfamiliar Chinese nameplate. With An Conghui now steering the group’s international strategy directly, and Li Shufu still holding the reins at the top of the parent company, Geely’s European ambitions look less like a side project and more like the central plan.