It’s a bit grotesque how happy Chancellor Olaf Scholz is (quite differently from Ukraine) that Canada is now delivering a repaired turbine for Nord Stream 1 despite anti-Russia sanctions. The work offered Vladimir Putin’s Gazprom a welcome reason to only send 40 percent of the agreed delivery volume through the Baltic Sea pipeline. Pipeline President Putin gave himself the reason for the complete stop to deliveries today: with the maintenance work scheduled for ten days and starting now. A routine process that could not end routinely.
My colleague Moritz Koch meticulously delivers the “reconstruction of a state failure”: As in the Berlin government district, nobody believed the Americans who warned of suspiciously low fill levels in the Gazprom gas storage facility in 2021. How Angela Merkel embellished, how Peter Altmaier acts very clever in hindsight, how critical articles were suppressed and how Olaf Scholz wonders today why nobody drew a conclusion from the empty memory. Yes, why do you think? The ex-vice chancellor should know that better than his dwindling voters.
For autumn and winter there are signs that gas is a scarce commodity: prices will rise and quantities will have to be rationed between industry and private households. For Economics Minister Robert Habeck, a possible state allocation of gas is a “political nightmare scenario”. That would “pose a crucial test for Germany that we haven’t had for a long time”. Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff had the final word on the gas meltdown: “Going into such a dependency with your eyes wide open – that wasn’t a side effect, that was the desired goal.”
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Good advice is expensive, especially when it comes to the big four “Ds” of transformation capitalism: decarbonization, digitization, deglobalization, deals. The heads of companies, alarmed by the specter of “disruption”, are increasingly looking to be closer to consulting firms, as our cover story shows.
The three leading global strategy companies would therefore have increased their German sales by around 20 percent in 2021, according to the text with reference to an evaluation by the Scientific Society for Management and Consulting in Bonn. Accordingly, McKinsey is ahead with more than one billion euros in sales, closely followed by the Boston Consulting Group and the fast-growing company Bain & Company, which comes to 400 million.
A turbulent market and violent poaching mean that staff turnover is currently 13.3 percent, the highest it was eight years ago. Jean Paul comments: “One only uses and understands those rules of life, of which one has gone through the experiences on which they are based in such a way that one could have given the rules oneself.”
Years ago, the US group Uber tried to secure a global market for itself quickly, with a large lobby army and rabid methods – against the established taxi companies. Ethics counted for little, as can be seen from the “Uber Files”, a data leak from more than 124,000 confidential documents.
It turns out that the US company won Emmanuel Macron, then Economics Minister and current President, as a friend in France in 2014. There were a number of hitherto unknown meetings, in which they were received in a “remarkably warm, friendly and constructive atmosphere,” the Uber people noted of appointments with Macron.
After leaving Brussels in 2014, the former EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes also campaigned clandestinely for Uber before she was officially allowed to become a consultant there for an annual salary of $200,000.
In Germany, the FDP’s current budget spokesman, Otto Fricke, coordinated the Uber lobbying campaign from September 2014 to March 2015. At that time he had left politics and joined the Munich agency CNC (today Cookies CNC). As Uber’s chief lobbyist for Europe wrote to the Liberal at the time: “You’re in charge, my friend.”
The filings also show that several Uber offices have been equipped with “kill switches,” special software designed to block investigators from accessing the computer in the event of a raid. But no software helped against the latest data leak.
(Photo: Getty Images)
Today Japan is watching a wake and election results. On display is the body of longtime Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was murdered by a 41-year-old man on Friday during the House of Lords campaign because he “held a grudge against a certain organization,” apparently a religious group. With his “Abenomics”, which focused on economic stimulus programs and deregulation, the conservative politician left behind a special Japanese economic concept.
Two days after the assassination, his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won the election on Sunday with 70 to 83 seats and can continue official business with coalition partner Komeito. A total of 125 of the 248 seats in the House of Lords were up for grabs. Despite the murder, Prime Minister Kishida stuck to the election date: “Under no circumstances must we allow violence to be used during an election to suppress the expression of opinion.”
With a monkey circus of merriment, the Netflix series “King of Stonks” is currently reminiscent of the swindles at Wirecard, the pulverized Dax group. A lot is well thought out, but reality beats every script. Now the colleagues of the “Financial Times” reveal how the former CEO Markus Braun fabricated an increasingly garish illusion show of the supposedly good numbers in order to actually persuade the investor Softbank to inject 900 million euros in April 2019. As a result, Wirecard was even able to take on another 500 million euros in debt.
After the “FT” reported at the time that the company’s third-party partners in Manila, Singapore and Dubai were responsible for almost all of the profits, the Softbank people, who had become skeptical, were presented with a manipulated list of fake customers from the three exotic branches – which were not real at all clients had. Brown denies wrongdoing. Until the trial begins one day, we listen to Magnus Cramer (Mathias Brandt) on Netflix: “Honestly, the world loves assholes”.
And then there is Sanna Marin, Prime Minister who initiated Finland’s NATO accession last week and rewarded herself with a vacation at the weekend. The 36-year-old social democrat began by visiting the Finnish rock festival “Ruisrock”, which the whole world learned about and talked about because the organizers posted a picture of the rock fan on Instagram.
A smiling, optimistic woman in a leather jacket, shorts and boots can be seen, acting as a visual counter-message to the man who threatens her small country: the cramped, weary master of the Kremlin in Moscow, who takes one uniformed command after another lets dance. Unlike the Kremlin vassal Erich Honecker, Udo Lindenberg would probably never have thought of singing to this state leader, secretly putting on a leather jacket and being a “rocker” deep down.
I wish you a carefree start into the week.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
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