Tops vs. Flops

Next Wednesday there will be an election that is not an election: At the so-called Annual General Meeting of Deutsche Bahn on 25 March, the Federal Government will appoint the new Supervisory Board. It is already clear that former Secretary of State for Transport Michael Odenwald will remain chief controller. Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker (57), the long-standing consumer policy spokeswoman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, is to become a …

The traditional Hessian heating manufacturer Viessmann has set up a holding company with a prominent “Board of Directors”. In addition to the long-standing company boss Martin Viessmann (69) and his daughter Katharina, three external experts are represented on the board: Madeleine Jahr from the investment banking and consultancy firm GCA Altium, Flick-Gocke-Schaumburg partner Thomas Rödder and Oetker boss Albert Christmann act as “non-executives”. “With the Family Holding, we have created …

Heiner Thorborg has sharply criticized the planned “women’s quota light” for board members. The personnel consultant predicts that this would result in “rows and rows of insufficiently qualified women being promoted to the top”. We disagree: The pool of capable female managers is large enough – one only has to take the trouble to look outside established networks. At the same time, however, we are convinced that supervisory boards still …

You remember Klaus Zapf? The quirky removal company, who died in 2014, kept Germany’s stock corporations on the go for years. Many considered him to be the epitome of a “predatory shareholder” – the species, in other words, that species which blocked AGM resolutions with actions for rescission in order to force companies to make expensive settlements. At peak times, stock corporation lawyer Theodor Baums identified more than 40 so-called …