Last 26 railroads were examined by former consultants, including three former Group board members. The result was obviously clear - after all, now applies a new rule: the Deutsche Bahn wants to provide former managers no longer with consultancy contracts.
As the Supervisory Board announced after its meeting in Berlin, consultancy contracts for former DB managers should be prohibited from now on. The regulation also applies to contracts with "persons with a politically exposed position". "For us it is clear: the practice of the past is turned off," explained supervisory board chief Michael Odenwald.
The railway has been in the past more often because of high costs for consultancy contracts in the criticism. According to media reports, the state-owned company paid more than 500 million euros to consultancies between 2015 and 2018.
Since the beginning of June, the Group has been investigating conspicuous consultant agreements that former top executives had received in the years 2010 to 2018 without the involvement of the Supervisory Board.
In one case, the panel cleared the way for reimbursement of fees from an ex-board member of a subsidiary. He is said to have delivered insufficient services for the contract worth more than 300,000 euros.
In one case, according to the investigative report, which is the Reuters news agency, a contract contrary to duty on the Supervisory Board of the Group closed.
With hybrid bonds against the gaps in funding
According to supervisory board circles, the committee also dealt on Wednesday with the billions in funding gap at the railway. This should now be partially closed with so-called hybrid bonds over two billion euros. These are formally counted not on the debt but on the equity.
As the railway has practically reached its debt limit of 20.4 billion euros set by the Bundestag, this is not officially exceeded. In fact, these bonds are also debt, for which higher interest rates are due than for normal bonds.
The remainder of the financial gap of a total of more than five billion euros, the railway wants to close on the sale or initial public offering subsidiary Arriva. In circles of the supervisory board it was said, presumably in November the committee in a special meeting over it will decide. The financial investors Carlyle and Apollo are particularly interested.