Minority shareholder Georg Haub sends his lawyer to the advisory board

Christian Haub

The Tengelmann majority owner can acquire his brother Georg’s shares in 2025.

(Photo: Tengelmann)

Dusseldorf The minority shareholder of the Tengelmann family group, Georg Haub, is sending his long-standing lawyer, Matthias Schüppen from the law firm Graf Kanitz Schüppen & Partner, to the company’s advisory board. The confirmed scooping of the Handelsblatt. The food newspaper had first reported on it.

At the beginning of August, the two brothers had reached an agreement to end their legal disputes and agree on a new partnership agreement. According to information from company circles, Christian Haub will be given the right to take over Georg Haub’s shares within a certain time window in 2025 and thus become the sole owner in the future. Likewise, Georg Haub has the right to sell his shares to his brother.

Another part of the agreement is that Georg Haub has the right to delegate his own advisory board member. This is noted as a special right in the partnership agreement and can be viewed in the commercial register and has now happened.

Tengelmann is managed by Georg Haub’s younger brother, Christian Haub. He holds 69 percent of the company, Georg Haub the remaining 31 percent.

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The Tengelmann Group includes the textile discounter Kik, the DIY chain Obi, the real estate company Trei and shares in the Dax group Zalando. There are also investments in start-ups. Tengelmann sales were recently 8.3 billion euros. This makes the group, with around 75,000 employees, one of the largest non-listed family companies in Germany.

After the disappearance of his eldest brother Karl-Erivan in April 2018, 57-year-old Christian Haub took over the management of Tengelmann in the Swiss Alps. After years of dispute, he bought the shares of the missing brother’s children last year and thus became the majority shareholder. Christian Haub released reserves to pay the purchase price to the heirs.

The Advisory Board is already meeting this Friday

After Christian and Georg Haub closed ranks in September 2021, there was another quarrel in the family at the beginning of this year. The 60-year-old Georg Haub had demanded repayment of 800 million euros to Tengelmann Warenhandelsgesellschaft. He had filed an action for annulment against the shareholders’ resolution to release the reserves, as the Handelsblatt reported in February. He was represented by Schüppen as a lawyer.

At the end of October, the Munich Regional Court confirmed: “The parties have unanimously declared the legal dispute settled.”

Schüppen will be the fourth member to take part in the advisory board meeting on Friday. He is also an auditor and sits on the board of directors of the listed construction equipment manufacturer Wacker Neuson.

The Advisory Board will continue to be led by former Beiersdorf CEO Thomas Ingelfinger. The advisory board and President of the Economic Council of the CDU, Astrid Hamker, and Pier Paolo Righi, CEO of the lifestyle company Karl Lagerfeld, also belong to the committee.

Christian Haub’s lawyer, Mark Binz, told Handelsblatt: “It’s a shame that Georg Haub didn’t send a respected entrepreneur to the advisory board like his brother did.” Binz cites an experienced real estate expert or investment banker as an example. And he adds that the choice instead “fell on his longtime litigator, who only recently sued the company.”

An advisory board is obliged primarily to look after the interests of the company. A party representative therefore runs the risk of “getting into serious conflicts of interest”. Matthias Schüppen did not want to comment further.

More: Tengelmann: Haub brothers end legal dispute

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