Buhlmann's Corner

HochTief and the shareholders

Spurred on by Dr. Lü, the Teutons whisper, “the ugly foreigners are destroying the noble (German) economy.” But aren’t we all “foreigners”? The Hessian in Bavaria, the Baden man in Stuttgart, the German in Portugal or in America? In the latter case, it can go wrong: one in four Texans has Hessian-German blood.

Let’s turn to something essential: the law! The Schaeffler family laugh blood and tears when they think of German laws investors are supposed be “protected” by. The reason for the failure of the “grande dame” was not the law, but the bad timing. The same misconception was also Continental’s when it let luckier Siemens talk it into swallowing the VDO titbit. Incidentally, a titbit that came from Mannesmann, when it was broken up toin the world’s largest takeover by the evil aliens of the day, Vodafone. A few years and a change of leadership later, shareholders wrote down those takeover prices “cash-neutrally”.

Where even the law does not help (it did not help against Porsche either – there too at the end it was foreigners from Austria taking over, in cooperation with Qatar), then politics should be kept out rather than brought in. Lü should still recall how an SPD party conference brought a political commitment at his last employer, Holzmann, but provided no solution.

Dr. Lü is only the successful synonym of the board member in the post-Germany-Inc. era. If directors paid more attention to shareholders and a “correct” valuation of the shares that are the capital base they sit and work on, then no one – no Schaeffler from Herzogenaurach, no Piëch-Porsche from Salzburg, no football president from Madrid and no sheikh from the Gulf – would be able to buy up, destroy or loot companies – no matter whether the buyer has that in mind or something else.

If ACS can buy HochTief at the low point in the stock market, then this is because of the shareholders’ low interest in the company and, further down, the low motivation of the HochTief Executive Board. The stock market lives on highs and lows; whoever does not want that must abolish the exchanges – not only the lows, but the highs too.