we begin this short week with two men who have been able to recite Hamlet’s line, “To be or not to be,” to themselves for some time. You can picture them holding onto the root above the abyss with one hand. Do you still have your job tomorrow? What other capers can we expect?
You certainly expected Boris Johnson, more precisely Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, in this category. Even at his alma mater in Oxford, the conservative attracted attention as the winner of speech battles. As British Prime Minister, he has been doing his political practical jokes since 2019. Last night, the 57-year-old survived a palace rebellion by his own Tory faction. 211 for him, 148 against him. That’s not enough for a vote of no confidence, but not enough for a vote of confidence either. The images and lies surrounding Corona parties at 10 Downing Street had shocked the righteous in his party too much. People booed. He only stays because a change on the commander’s hill seems inopportune because of the Ukraine war. Johnson says, “The best is yet to come.” But that doesn’t bode well.
The second person who has been feeling anything but secure in his job for some time now is VW CEO Herbert Diess. He too: a survivor. Things are heating up in Wolfsburg, because the CEO wants to push through his central software unit Cariad by hook or by crook, but “bug” after “bug” is lined up. This has the dramatic consequence that
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- Flagship models such as the electric Porsche Macan or the Audi Artemis electric sedan could roll out up to two years later than planned;
- the management culture is suffering from a continuing power struggle with Audi boss Markus Duesmann, who had to hand over the management of Cariad to Diess himself and
- the supervisory board steps in and wants to see the CEO come up with ideas for a solution for the march out of the mess in the next three weeks.
One of the arabesques surrounding Cariad is that Duesmann commissioned the consulting firm McKinsey to evaluate the chaos. This can be understood in such a way that the Audi boss and possible corporate crown prince created a weapons depot for the conflict with Diess, who, by the way, had freed him from BMW under difficult conditions. But now the Audi boss is using developers who he had only temporarily assigned to Cariad to further develop the software on his own. Porsche boss Oliver Blume is said to have already considered buying the infotainment software from the digital giant Apple. Conclusion: Progress at VW still has four wheels, but things aren’t running smoothly.
The Russian sovereign wealth fund feeds itself on oil and gas revenues – and recently its volume has risen so sharply that Olaf Scholz may start to ponder. The Chancellor had told economists that the German transfers to Rosneft and Gazprom would not help the Russian war machine. In fact, Germany’s thirst for energy, which fasting must not disturb, has swelled Vladimir Putin’s fund to $197.7 billion.
At the beginning of May, he had reported $ 155.2 billion. Russia will need the capital, because in 2022 the economy is expected to shrink by 7.6 percent as a result of western sanctions. An internal forecast by the Moscow Ministry of Finance even assumes a minus of up to twelve percent. “The tongue may hide the truth, but the eyes…never!” as Russian satirist Mikhail Bulgakov put it.
(Photo: AP)
But who wants to live in Vladimir Putin’s coercive system, which thrives on violence and blackmail like a regional unit of Cosa Nostra? Around 600 of the 1,500 Russian IT specialists at Deutsche Bank don’t want that. They have relocated from Moscow or Saint Petersburg to Berlin for their employer. There they will work in the technology center. Hundreds of other employees have apparently shown great interest. In this way, the bank secures important know-how if the Russian IT locations have to close due to tensions between the EU and Moscow.
And then there is the South African Gupta family of entrepreneurs, who were all too close to former President Jacob Zuma. It went like clockwork, which is now the subject of legal investigations. Rajesh and Atul Gupta were arrested yesterday in the United Arab Emirates at the request of South African prosecutors. Interpol searched for the two last July. Zuma’s nine years in office were filled with scandals and stories of corruption. Specifically, the Gupta brothers have a $1.6 million contract for an agricultural study. We already know from Gottfried Keller: “In an emergency, the farmer ties his shoe with silk.”
I wish you a pleasant day.
Best regards
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
PS: As early as June, Ukraine could take the first step toward EU candidate status. We are interested in your opinion: Is a EU accession a realistic prospect for Ukraine and would you support it? How would relations with Russia change? Write us your opinion in five sentences [email protected]. We will publish selected articles with attribution on Thursday in print and online.