ACTIONS CORNER

Commerzbank is sticking to the line decided on in February 2009, namely to cut its bonus payments to investment bankers by 90%. On January 8, a tribunal in Singapore ordered the bank to pay bonuses to ten former Dresdner Bank employees who were suing for payments due of some 5.5 million Euros. In his 68-page verdict motivation, Judge Lionel Yee pointed out that the declaration made by Dr. Jentzsch on August 18, to the effect that payment would be made, had been duly and expressly authorized and hence was to be deemed legally binding on Dresdner Bank.

Daimler and Rheinmetall are not to be held co-responsible under US law for the atrocities committed by the apartheid regime in South Africa. A New York judge declared the case inadmissible on the grounds of insufficiency of motivation. The plaintiffs, the majority of whom are of South African nationality, had declared personal or family-member pain and suffering at the hand of the apartheid regime that ruled the country until 1994, suffering torture and other criminal activity, and claimed compensation. ,The auto manufacturing group hopes that this litigation, now over ten years old, can be finally laid to rest.

The temporary shut-down of the Biblis nuclear power plant in 2011 after the Fukushima incident was illegal. It is likely that the government of Hesse will be obliged to pay compensation to RWE for damages in excess of 100 million Euros. In its ruling of January 14, the Federal Constitutional Court in Leipzig rejected the appeal lodged by Hesse against the verdict handed down by the Constitutional Court in Kassel, in favour of the generating company. RWE was the only provider of nuclear generated energy to challenge the three-month shutdown.