Scandal in the VW supervisory board – Handelsblatt Morning Briefing

The new polar star of the auto industry is rival Tesla, which wants to produce 500,000 electric cars annually in Grünheide with 10,000 people in a fully automated factory, he continued. In 2020, 25,000 people were required for this volume at the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg. The announcement by the CEO: He will do everything possible to prevent the site from crashing, as he experienced at BMW in Birmingham when the unions resisted modernization.

30,000 jobs gone. This amounts to a declaration of war for the unions and works councils at VW. On the supervisory board, the representatives of the main shareholders – the Porsche / Piëch families, the state of Lower Saxony, the emirate of Qatar – had no idea what Diess was going to instigate. My colleagues Stefan Menzel, Martin Murphy and Sönke Iwersen report in their enlightening play that the utterances of the words were “armored” after the lecture. This is not how you can deal with the most powerful supervisory board in Germany.

CEO Diess, who internally pushes a change concept called “Trinity”, is more important than etiquette. The man, whose contract was prematurely extended to 2025, wants to know in the next meeting of the supervisors on November 12th – then it comes to the investment planning for the coming years. His motto is “Either or”, or, more martially, “Victory or Siberia”.

Between the explorations for a “traffic light” coalition, which should provide a basis for deeper discussions on Friday, election winner Olaf Scholz traveled to the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington. But new ideas are likely to buzz in his head as to how the planned “progress alliance” of Berlin could get major spending programs off the ground despite empty coffers and the debt brake.

The SPD finance minister has long since had models calculated under the radar, and he has already done some things as mayor in Hamburg, our report reports. The nice thing for him is that the actions do not flow directly into the federal budget.

The canon of constructions includes the establishment of a federal housing association, a stronger role for public companies such as KfW Bank and the start of public investment and transformation funds, which economics professor Jens Südekum brought into the debate. “Public investment companies will now come after the election, without them it will not work”, he says. And: “It is impossible to finance the necessary government investments within the framework of the debt brake.” It may be, but it will be interesting to see how Christian Lindner thinks that.

The IMF is sending warning notices to the world for its own annual meeting. The global economy would enter a phase of inflationary risk, the organization said. The central banks should be “very, very vigilant”. Early measures for a stricter monetary policy are required if price pressures persist. The “World Economic Outlook” of the IMF warns against a slowdown in growth after a strong recovery so far this year.

Because it had gone so well, it was too early to “say anything about stagflation,” said chief economist Gita Gopinath. It was always known that the Corona lull would cause problems to be generated by a strong demand for primary products and raw materials. If you look into the crystal ball in Washington, you will see that inflation will pick up sharply by the end of the year, calm down in mid-2022 and then fall back to the level before the pandemic.

France is discussing an “Agenda 2030” that Germany does not have. Yesterday, President Emmanuel Macron spent two hours in front of entrepreneurs outlining his Jupiter-like plan for the next few years, six months before the presidential elections. It is about 30 billion euros in investments over the next five years – in addition to the corona recovery plan already submitted for over 100 billion.

• Macron praises nuclear power as a “stroke of luck” for the country – and presents plans for new mini nuclear reactors.
• Renewable energies are also to be expanded vigorously so that the atomic share of energy can fall to 50 percent.
• In the production of green hydrogen, Macron wants France to become Europe’s champion.
• Macron plans to invest four billion euros in the auto industry and aircraft construction. They should remain the core of the domestic economy.
• At least 100 new locations are to be created that will develop from start-ups. The state wants to provide up to five billion for this.

The thrust of the head of state fighting for his re-election: “We need a country that produces.”

One is surprised at how many start-ups are developing in the atmosphere of German research. On Thursday next week we want to take a closer look with the “Unibator” from Frankfurt University. Then the “University Innovation Challenge” will run at 6 pm with “battles” of young student companies that have made it into the final round. The winners will be chosen at a festive award ceremony. If you would like to be there on October 21st, you can register here free of charge.

And then there is the former US President and Twitter King Donald Trump, whose Trump Organization is aiming for a lucrative deal. It’s about the luxury hotel in Washington, which was ready for occupancy just at the beginning of his tenure in 2016 and attracted many guests who were hoping for favors from Trump. Now the investment firm CGI Merchant Group is to take over the usage rights of the building for more than 370 million dollars, so the “Wall Street Journal”.

The “New York Times” comes up with another story about Donald and Melania: According to this, the “odd couple” is said to have accepted fake fur robes as a gift from the Saudi Arabian royal family, despite warnings. Somehow, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing comes to mind: “You don’t cheat a cheater, you just deceive him.”

I wish you a productive day, maybe with real gifts.

I warmly greet you
you
Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor

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