The mantra of the monopoly of our time is as follows: The tech companies lie in wait on the wall – so let’s buy things quickly ourselves. For the financial sector, Jamie Dimon, head of the largest American bank JP Morgan, explains the oligopolists’ new stampede: “Basically, banking systems around the world are going to get smaller because so many things happen outside of banks.”
His answer: He wants to blow the storm on the German financial bastion and hunt down their medium-sized companies from Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank. “You do it very well,” Dimon said in an interview with Handelsblatt about the top dogs, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it too.” After relocating assets to Frankfurt, his bank has now risen to the top five in Germany you want more. But even on Wall Street, people know that increasing courage is arrogance.
For ten years they were engaged in a kind of remote duel. Who had the better financial strategy? On the one hand there was ex-Bundesbank boss Axel Weber, whose appointment as CEO of Deutsche Bank had already been initiated internally at the last minute – which is why he became chairman of the board of directors at UBS in Switzerland. In Frankfurt, on the other hand, ex-Allianz finance director Paul Achleitner rose to head the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank. In this duel, Achleitner’s strategists have only caught up in recent years.
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Well, the irony of history, both financially powerful ones will stop almost simultaneously in 2022. It had already become clear in Zurich on Friday that ex-Morgan Stanley manager Colm Kelleher would succeed Weber. In the case of the Germans, on the other hand, the supervisory board yesterday confirmed the appointment of Alexander Wynaendts as chief overseer. The Dutchman once headed the insurance giant Aegon, where he was involved in 87 takeover transactions. From now on it will be merged back.
Henry Kravis and George Roberts, “K” and “R” on behalf of the private equity piranha KKR, have just announced their retirement to the top of the board of directors when the Manhattan financial firm is causing a stir in Italy. The Americans want to take over TIM, the successor to Telecom Italia, for almost 11 billion euros. Including network infrastructure and the subsidiary Fibercop, which is expanding the last mile to the customers.
At Fibercop, KKR is already involved with almost 40 percent. TIM is number one in the fixed network and number two in mobile communications in Italy. The US attack is unlikely to suit the largest single shareholder, Vivendi from Paris with the right-wing Vincent Bolloré as the mastermind. The course is in the basement. Now only the government in Rome can stop the deal – because sensitive infrastructure should not be under foreign control.
Helge Braun, who is still minister of the Chancellery in the management, shows himself in front of a breathtaking slogan in the race for the chairmanship of the CDU: “New CDU. New strength. ”Today at 2:30 pm the doctor from Gießen introduces his team. Names like Andreas Jung, Serap Güler and Karin Prien are already in circulation. Compared to fellow candidate Friedrich Merz, 66, he should still have the worse cards.
Braun’s plan: “The CDU must quickly become capable of campaigning as an opposition.” Anyone who campaigned for caution in the pandemic in the summer “was decried by the leading media as an alarmist,” complains Braun on his own behalf. In the CDU, however, very few warned.
In a rolled out TV documentary series on Amazon Prime, FC Bayern Munich looks like a yoga-inspired, very clean repository for its greatest asset: the players. It is precisely his top staff that now confronts the record champions with unexpected problems. On Friday they even lost 1: 2 in Augsburg. After the unvaccinated national player Joshua Kimmich, Bayern’s soccer players Serge Gnabry, Jamal Musiala, Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting and Michael Cuisance have also quarantined “in consultation with the responsible health authorities”.
You are also considered unvaccinated and have had contact with someone close to the FC Bayern team who has tested positive for the corona virus. The club is concerned about the topic excessively, the club management is taking action: Four of the players were asked to report on Thursday and learned that there is no retroactive salary for the quarantine-related failure. In the end, the game break is likely to be more painful than the financial loss.
It’s hard to believe that the outgoing Health Minister Jens Spahn was once one of the most popular German politicians. Recently he confused with statements that Moderna was better off than Biontech when it comes to vaccination. Now Spahn has to apologize to the representatives of the federal states for his communication: The expiry date of the Moderna vaccine was not the decisive point for the limitation of the booster vaccinations.
It is “a misunderstanding” that Biontech vaccine is withheld. Rather, his ministry was surprised by the currently increasing number of orders, although vaccination is preached everywhere. Ten million cans of Biontech will be delivered in the next 14 days alone. A withdrawal of the much criticized lids of Biontech cans is not possible: “I cannot withdraw it because it is simply a question of the available quantity. I can’t deliver a vaccine from Biontech that isn’t there. “
Doctors’ representatives criticize that the patients are now insecure, that there would be additional work in the practices and the kink in the booster vaccinations. Today, Monday, the health ministers of the federal states are discussing the corona situation with Spahn. Here, too, a denial is “the desperate attempt to get the toothpaste back into the tube”.
(Photo: Verpoorten)
And then there are Viktoria Verpoorten and father William, Eggheads and world market leader for branded egg liqueurs from Bonn, who have been singing cheerfully for 60 years: “Ei, ei, ei … Verpoorten”. In an interview with Handelsblatt, the two describe how young Viktoria is being prepared for the generation change. She is “clearly structured, hard-working and straightforward, not a chic”, praises the senior – and actually recently revealed to her the secret recipe of her own drink, which has not changed since 1976.
The junior boss describes how she rejuvenated the clientele, down to an average age of 44 years. There is already “a certain hype about eggnog, similar to gin”. Patron Verpoorten cannot ignore that: “Eggnog is not firewater, it is a pleasure. Eggnog was never out. ”Well, you think: It seems as if Verpoorten wants to be the new Jägermeister for boys.
I wish you an enjoyable start to the week.
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Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
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