It is the commitment of Germany’s richest woman (who doesn’t want to be reduced to just that) to family businesses and start-ups, to a vibrant economic structure. To this end, the BMW major shareholder from the Quandt dynasty created her own start-up for start-ups 20 years ago with her capital and Managing Director Helmut Schönenberger. Today it is – turnover: 40 million euros – Europe’s largest business incubator.
Companies such as Celonis, Personio, Flixmobility, Sono Motors and Lilium matured at UnternehmerTUM, a non-profit limited company that raised more than three billion euros in venture capital in 2021 – for a “new start-up era” and new “technology leaders”, as Schönenberger says in a double interview.
Just like in the industrial capitalism of the 19th century or after 1945, the republic needs a wave of promising young companies. She carried the thought with her that “we need more family businesses, founders who make their business ideas their own so that they become their life’s work,” explains Klatten.
She only really became an “entrepreneur” through her Munich start-up. It brings together research, talent, academia, entrepreneurs and venture capital. At the “CEO Dinner” the attempt is made to increase the circle of supporters even further.
The big vision, editor-in-chief Sebastian Matthes and I learned during the 90-minute conversation in the “Munich Urban Colab”, is to Europeanize our own model. In the end, Europe needs 50 business incubators, which are as big as UnternehmerTUM. A network should be created. Contacts are currently being made with other entrepreneurial families and research institutes in Europe.
Klatten says: “We are moving towards a new world order. The question is what role Europe can play in this. If we remain technologically independent, we will also preserve our culture and European identity.”
For our weekend title (“From heiress to enabler”), my colleague Larissa Holzki researched what start-ups are saying about UnternehmerTUM and where the people of Munich stand in Europe. A result: Only in London, Paris, Barcelona and Madrid have universities produced more founders than in Munich.
The people curse the energy crisis, the oil companies cheer it. As oil prices rise, so do their profits. Shell, for example, posted adjusted profit of $11.5 billion in the second quarter, better than the previous record profit of $9.1 billion from the first quarter.
As a small thank you, CEO Ben van Beurden, 64, now collects 16 million euros (previously 7.5 million) a year. Incidentally, this is the expert who warned us Europeans about a “hard winter”. Shell shareholders are also annoyed at the petrol pump, but pocket nice dividends and price gains.
Total Energies from France, on the other hand, reports an adjusted quarterly profit of almost ten billion dollars, after 2.2 billion in the previous year. Big Oil’s bonanza is a plea for an excess profits tax – like the one introduced by the British government.
We cannot help but think of Mark Twain: “Human: the only creature capable of blushing. But it is also the only thing that has reason for it.”
(Photo: imago images/ZUMA Wire)
The stopwatch was ticking yesterday when US President Joe Biden and China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping spoke via video call again after a four-month break. It lasted two hours and 17 minutes.
Both agreed in rejecting US politician Nancy Pelosi’s planned trip to Taiwan, albeit for different reasons. Biden doesn’t want to tease on this issue, and Xi doesn’t want to be stingy with grabbing the island. Chinese state media circulated a quote from their ruler on the matter of the one-China policy: “Those who play with fire only get burned.”
During this long period of time, in which top runners complete their marathons, the two also talked about climate change and health protection. A good conversation forms, but the matches were always at hand here.
what, recession? The President and the Federal Reserve recently announced that this will not happen. Now, however, America’s economic output has shrunk for the second consecutive quarter: this time by 0.9 percent after 1.6 percent previously. According to the definition of the economy, the “technical recession” has set in like the devil with Doctor Faustus.
This sparked a volcanic eruption of creativity in the White House to describe why a real recession would feel different (namely, with unemployment not there now). Joe Biden also sees himself strengthened because his long-awaited climate, social and tax package is being implemented.
Joe Manchin, a senator from West Virginia and at home in his own Democratic camp, gave up his opposition. Now $430 billion is earmarked for energy, electric cars, and health insurance—and a minimum tax of 15 percent for large corporations. Biden needs success quickly if he doesn’t want to resign after just four years like peanut farmer Jimmy Carter did in 1981.
My cultural tip for the weekend: an exhibition by the contemporary painter Cecily Brown in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. Her exciting pictures are abstract and figurative at the same time.
Paintings were created especially for this show, which thematize the English Garden, a few hundred meters from the museum. The Briton, who lives in New York, is also showing an impressive watercolor series on the myth of “Leda and the Swan”.
In an interview, the 53-year-old explained that she is interested in the constant contradiction in human life, i.e. the good and bad that can exist in the same place and at the same time. We are currently having these experiences outside of the museum on a daily basis.
And then there is Tarek Müller, 33, founder and co-managing director of the online fashion retailer About You from the Otto Group. In November 2021, he was driving an e-scooter in a trendy Hamburg district with 1.3 per mille alcohol – and was punished more severely than expected.
The public prosecutor’s office sentenced the rolling delinquent to ten months’ driving license suspension, three points in Flensburg and a fine of 1,500 euros, but the district court in Hamburg really got going and increased the fine to 80,000 euros.
When it became clear in the court that an economic celebrity with a monthly net income well above the initially estimated 1500 euros had strayed from the right path, the judge then made 2670 euros from a daily rate of 50 euros: “A penalty must be noticeable.”
Perhaps she knew the philosopher Nicolas Chamfort and wanted to achieve social balance: “Society is made up of two large classes: some have more meals than appetites, others far more appetites than meals.”
I wish you a relaxing weekend, maybe with women’s football – like Olaf Scholz, who is going to London for the European Championship final.
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor