siemens new chief Peter Loescher has his work cut out. German's biggest and most venerated company, now embroiled in scandal over bribes and under-the-table payments, has for the first time brought in an outsider to get the house in order.

Things are pretty desperate when you have to bring in someone who has never run a corporation.

Loescher's first task will be to get the Siemens workforce off the floor, get them up and running.

"Rebuilding morale is critical. He needs to find a way to stop the lawyers from totally running the company," one former insider told the Los Angeles Times.

Siemens woes aren't over. Bloomberg reports that its supervisory board chairman Gerhard Cromme has told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that there could be "some more bad surprises".

That comes after two of its former managers have already been sentenced and a businessman has pleaded guilty to helping a Siemens subsidiary win a fraudulent contract.

So there's more ahead.

Cromme has already indicated that the company is facing massive fines and has not ruled out the prosect of it being blacklisted by US authorities.

More in this interview, published in the English-language version of Der Spiegel.

Clearly, this drama still has to play out.