DEHNEN.s Corner

Aareal Bank, Software AG, ThyssenKrupp: Is that it for the independence of supervisory boards? Dear readers of GermanBoardNews, what do you remember about the 2021 AGM season? My impression is: there is no significant reverberation. In the public perception, the shareholders’ meetings have been largely silent – also due to Corona and the Bundestag election campaign. And to date, the vast majority of the players seem deeply relaxed: After all, …

Read More

How investors and auditors bring wrong thinking into companies Dear readers of GermanBoardNews, it sounds as if a profound conflict is brewing. Financial investors have threatened the Big 4 to vote against their reappointment at general meetings in future, Manager Magazin reported at the beginning of the month. PwC & Co. would finally have to ensure that “climate-related risks are adequately considered and disclosed in annual financial statements”. I wonder, …

Read More

Without G, there’s no E or S: What ESG analysts and investors neglect Dear readers of GermanBoardNews, at the World Climate Conference in Glasgow – hopefully – important decisions are being made for the future of our planet. It is already clear that the summit will bring climate protection even more into focus, including for boards of directors, supervisory boards and shareholders ESG ratings will thus become even more important …

Read More

Dear readers of GermanBoardNews, important decisions by boards of directors and supervisory boards could be significantly delayed in the future. With the “Directive on Sustainable Corporate Governance”, the EU is planning new due diligence requirements for decision-makers and expanded legal action options for civil society groups. The Commission intends to present a first draft this month. At the heart of the rules is the obligation to take into account the …

Read More

Dear readers of GermanBoardNews, we are witnessing the next showdown between investors and the company: Shareholder advisory firm ISS has recommended that Tesla shareholders remove two board members – Kimbal Musk (brother of company CEO Elon Musk), and James Murdoch (son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch). Murdoch’s actions in particular seem to be a thorn in the side of ISS experts. He sits on central board committees and is therefore …

Read More

Dear readers of GermanBoardNews, how do you become a board member? What do you have to be able to do or be? And what does corporate governance have to do with it? These questions occupy hundreds of women and men every year – for the most varied of motives (often they do not know them themselves). However, there is also a not insignificant number of people for whom these questions …

Read More

Dear readers of the GermanBoardNews, we are now back for you! The summer holidays are over, the madness of everyday life has long since caught up with us again. As always, we will keep calm and look at current topics through corporate governance glasses. The current situation: We have not heard much from the so-called Government Commission on the German Corporate Governance Code (DCGK) or from the Association of Supervisory …

Read More

Dear GBN readers, before we say goodbye to the (summer) break before the next ‘wave’, another “Bravo, Jens Wilhelm & Co.”! Who is he? Jens Wilhelm, member of the Board of Managing Directors of Union Investment, but also: member of the DCGK Commission (of which nothing has been heard for a long time) and member of the Board of Managing Directors and the Presidium of the Deutsches Aktieninstitut (also the …

Read More

Dear readers of GermanBoardNews, researching, discussing, forming opinions: There is more work behind our analyses beyond the writing than I imagined when we launched GermanBoardNews six years ago. In the course of 232 issues, a lot has changed: We have discarded sections and introduced new ones, put the website www.germanboardnews.de in the spotlight and involved the corporate governance community more. Through it all, one thing has never changed: We are …

Read More