ACTIONS CORNER

Commerzbank has suffered a setback in the dispute regarding the annulment of its  contract with Ulrich Sieber. A ruling handed down by the Frankfurt Landgericht on April 24 confirms what the media had already published – the annulment of the contract with the former Head of Human resources is null and void. The court ruled that the planned cut-back in staff and the downsizing of the Board of Directors, as well as the restructuring of certain business segments are not grounds for justified dismissal, stating in the motivation that “this was not an instance of ‘justified dismissal’”. In a communiqué, Commerzbank continues to maintain the justifiability of the dismissal, and is considering an appeal.

The Iran dispute is continuing to haunt Clearstream. The supplier of post-trading services of the Deutsche Börse group is again being investigated by American magistrates for suspected sanction busting. According to a company communiqué, the magistrates of the South New York district have begun preliminary investigations involving Clearstream’s possible recycling and breaching sanctions. The investigations in which Clearstream is cooperating with the American magistrates is still at a very early stage; the investigators are seeking information regarding Iran’s central bank.

In a ruling handed down on April 14, the Hamburg Finanzgericht upheld the urgent motion initiated by E.ON and RWE, the companies who manage nuclear power-stations, on the question of surtax charged on nuclear fuels stating that “pro-tempore, the relevant customs authorities repay a total sum of over 2.2 thousand million Euros of duties paid on nuclear fuels”. According to the court, the duty, introduced in 2011, was merely “a tax to absorb the profits of firms that manage nuclear power stations”. The fundamental importance of the case prompted the court to allow the German Bundesrepublik to lodge an appeal with the Federal tax tribunal.