In companies like VW or BMW, “co-management” between the board and the works council has become established. This is roughly how Robert Habeck imagines the relationship between business and politics. In an interview with my colleagues Sebastian Matthes, Thomas Sigmund and Klaus Stratmann, the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy explains: “We are in a time when the relationship between business and politics has to be defined differently than a few years ago.”
Company representatives once wished they could be left alone. Today, a “politically defined framework” is necessary to manage the ecological, digital and global transformation in a “completely changed competitive situation”. Just a few days ago, Habeck met 17 group CEOs in Berlin, this week he is visiting Thyssen-Krupp Steel.
- The abolition of the EEG surcharge, originally planned for early 2023, is to be implemented as early as July 1, 2022 in view of the high electricity prices: “That’s the plan.”
- “Differential contracts” should be made possible quickly. The state guarantees companies that they will be reimbursed the difference to the market price for ecologically important, green products that are not yet marketable.
- In turn, the Ministry of Economics wants to help small and medium-sized businesses to find foreign skilled workers in pilot projects. According to Habeck, people could be better integrated through “the work and the colleagues”. Qualifications should be recognized more easily.
The new green perspective: because he wants to be successful, the vice chancellor is increasingly becoming a walking mediation committee.
A bank is only as good as its reputation. From this point of view, the major Swiss bank Credit Suisse is in a deplorable state. Once she had to admit to the US authorities that she “consciously and willingly” violated US sanctions rules. Sometimes own managers were shadowed. Then again, apparently, customers with the most serious crime level were attracted.
This is illustrated by the “Suisse Secrets” complex, a collection of cases researched by the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, NDR, WDR and several international media partners. Criminals, dictator clans like that of Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, and corrupt officials were said to be customers well into the 2010s. In the case of an ex-Siemens manager, assets of 54 million Swiss francs were noticed, hardly anything laboriously saved. The former head of the Nigeria business was convicted in 2008 as part of the Siemens bribery scandal.
Everything about as nice as chocolate melted in the alpine sun. Especially since the business figures of Credit Suisse lack any luster. The financial institution strictly rejects the allegations: All of this is “incomplete, incoherent information” and that one is law-abiding on Zurich’s Paradeplatz.
The media informant, on the other hand, left an external statement with his internal data: “I believe that Swiss banking secrecy is immoral… This situation allows corruption and deprives developing countries of much-needed tax revenue.”
One is somehow reminded of the writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt: “The world made me a whore, now I’m making it a brothel.”
As the whistleblower of the western world, the CIA is not very reliable. The US secret service had expected Russian troops to invade Ukraine last Wednesday. Now the same sources say that Russia has massed 150,000 instead of 130,000 soldiers at the border. It has been proven that President Vladimir Putin, despite other announcements, is leaving thousands of soldiers in Belarus after a maneuver. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: “The risk of an attack is increasing.“
The current situation: Along with Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia are demanding EU sanctions against Russia. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on the other hand, wants to continue diplomatic efforts until tanks actually roll into Ukraine and “airplanes are in the sky”. Putin, on the other hand, already blames the Ukrainian army for the “escalation”. Deliveries of modern weapons and ammunition from the West are “pushing Kiev towards a military solution”.
At the Munich Security Conference, Western representatives practiced shoulder-to-shoulder. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi also stressed that the principle of the inviolability of borders applies to all UN members, including Ukraine. But then he pointed out that Europeans should ask themselves whether a continuous eastward expansion of NATO really serves peace. According to Wang, NATO is a product of the “Cold War”.
Conclusion: It’s as if the days of the “Iron Curtain” are coming back.
How Donald Trump once cheered on Twitter: It’s like having your own newspaper. But for a year now, the ex-president and agitator has not had access to Twitter or his other propaganda toy, Facebook. He was thrown out. Trump plans to launch his own social media app, Truth Social, this Monday. “Get ready!”, he had previously toned: “Your favorite president will be back soon.” In “Trumpbook” fake news is good news – and truth is simply everything that serves ego and cash.
From the stock market star to the problem: That is the short history of the Dax health care group Fresenius. Under CEO Ulf Mark Schneider, who has meanwhile migrated to Nestlé, there were record numbers around 2015 – but then successor Stephan Sturm had to correct the forecasts downwards in 2017. The following year, the takeover of the US generics manufacturer Akron failed.
After the reality shock, stockbrokers hope that the dialysis subsidiary Fresenius Medical Care (FMC), which is also listed in the Dax, will be spun off when the figures for 2021 are presented tomorrow, Tuesday. The FMC business – it accounts for half of Fresenius sales – suffered a lot during the Corona period. Although the Bad Homburg group only holds 32 percent of the shares, it fully controls and consolidates the subsidiary through the structure of a partnership limited by shares.
According to our report, quite a few hope that an FMC deal will make the business easier and more profitable.
And then there’s US billionaire Carl Icahn, 86, who is putting some pressure on McDonald’s meatball chain. He calls for early commitments from the company to only accept meat from sows that are not kept in cruel crates during pregnancy. Although the man only has a small inventory of 200 shares, he has big ideas. Leslie Samuelrich and Maisie Ganzler are to take his place on the board of directors.
The “Big Mac” group replies that such an obligation demanded by Icahn is currently impossible due to the supply structure. By the end of the year, however, up to 90 percent of the meat purchased should come from sows that do not suffer from pregnancy torments. It is unclear whether Icahn is enough. He has apparently matured into a double activist in later years: one for shareholder welfare and one for animal welfare.
I wish you a good start into the week, during which you may just “have the luck” when it comes to something important.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
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