Buhlmann's Corner

Germany the developing country

The Deutsche Bank collects a 10 billion capital increase – and everyone says “Wow!” Days later, the Brazilians collect five times that – i.e. eight percent of the market value of the entire DAX 30, including Deutsche Bank – or one whole Daimler.

The Brazilian oil boys could pay for all of Hochtief 11.6 times over from the recapitalization. But the Spaniards of ACS do not want Hochtief so quickly – they want to act as slowly as Porsche did with Volkswagen. The Spanish Piëch too, ACS CEO Florentino Pérez, is the major shareholder, has his own football club and bought his first company for one peseta. That would be funny – “Dr.Lü” (Hochtief CEO Herbert Lütkestratkötter) tells himself – were it not that all this parallelism ends up with a reverse take-over. So he saves. He starts with the Supervisory Board and forms a rump one (without the two ACS representatives). They manifestly need tutoring in Corporate Governance – otherwise non-discharge is inevitable. Naturally, with this insoluble conflict of interest the appointment should immediately be suspended and finally terminated.

You can already see consultants sailing up and down the Rhine with §33 WpÜG to update companies’ statutes, and their fees. If ACS were only a family from Herzogenaurach, or Austrians were the ones pulling the strings – but the Ruhr baron does not want to offer himself to a Spaniard. Why not, actually? They managed to build their country over so successfully that no one even noticed that no one can pay for it. They have America under their thumb, to the extent that one highway accident need not mean replacing the throttles of millions of vehicles.

Of course, Dr.Lü has that too – but unfortunately “only” in Oceania. That makes a link-up make all the more sense. After all, alongside their sporting successes the Spaniards are going to finally need balances that make them eligible to play. Why is Europe actually there only between Strasbourg and the Manneken Pis in Brussels? Perhaps the ad-hoc supervisory-board members can see a little farther than the injured “no-one-asked-me” CEO. For it should not be the criteria of Der Spiegel that matter for company officers and their opinions, but those of the caring family man – a better future for all stakeholders.

So in this way, Germany too is a developing country. It will be interesting to see which ex-CEO is first to become Supervisory Board chair without a cooling-off period. Bayer CEO Werner Wenning might deserve it; he’s going on 30 September 2010, leaving a new, strong Bayer behind.