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Act of sabotage at the top of Bilfinger: How an unholy alliance conspired against Tom Blades

2021-03-02T13:13:38.129Z


An unholy alliance caused Tom Blades to retire early. Also present: employee representatives, lawyers, investment bankers and some inexperienced supervisory board members.


Icon: enlarge

Bad game:

Christina Johansson

took over the lead from

Tom Blades

Photo: Sepp Spiegl / ullstein bild

Tom Blades

(64) is not only an experienced, but also a particularly honorable manager.

Shortly before leaving the industrial service provider Bilfinger in January, he did not let confidants see what was going on in Mannheim.

He quietly withdrew with good words to the employees - probably to his domicile in Dubai.

Thus, supervisory board chairman

Eckhard Cordes

(70) was able to spread the tale of the sudden, but in the best of agreement, resignation without being contradicted.

Chief Financial Officer

Christina Johansson

(55) took over.

In fact, Blades was played badly.

Parts of the supervisory board had opposed the British.

The trigger was a change of ownership standing in the room.

Financial investor Clayton Dubilier & Rice and other private equity addresses had expressed general interest in taking over the group in the fall, which was very suitable for the major shareholders Cevian (26.8 percent) and ENA (12 percent), who were willing to sell.

Blades was also fundamentally open, consulted permanent advisor

Dietrich Becker

(57) from the investment bank Perella Weinberg.

But the expected offer never came.

Because employee representatives on the supervisory board, led by committee vice-chairman

Stephan Brückner

(55), felt compelled to intervene.

They fear that a sale of the company will result in a filleting à la Thyssenkrupp - or in a disempowerment of the employee bank as with Linde.

At her instigation, the supervisory board hired

Rainer Langel

(52), European head of the Macquarie investment bank.

In addition, Brückner & Co. hired the Stuttgart lawyer and conflict

solver Hartmut Hamann.

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Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-03-02

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