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Luitpold Prince of Bavaria: "Family entrepreneurs think long-term"

2021-06-24T21:06:55.014Z


Family businesses are an important pillar of the Bavarian economy, which promises stability, especially in times of crisis. Today the Bavarian family entrepreneurs meet for their annual congress. Its state chairman is Luitpold Prince of Bavaria. In the interview he talks about the responsibility of the entrepreneur, tax plans and the future of major events.


Family businesses are an important pillar of the Bavarian economy, which promises stability, especially in times of crisis.

Today the Bavarian family entrepreneurs meet for their annual congress.

Its state chairman is Luitpold Prince of Bavaria.

In the interview he talks about the responsibility of the entrepreneur, tax plans and the future of major events.

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Luitpold.jpg

© Prince Luitpold

Prince Luitpold, how are Bavarian family businesses going through the Corona crisis?

What matters is which industry you are in.

Stationary retail and catering in particular have faced huge problems, while companies like Amazon have experienced incomparable growth.

Still, most family businesses survived because they drew on their private wealth.

They had to because the state aid came much too late.

On average, equity has melted by ten percent.

Medium-sized companies with 200 to 300 employees are particularly affected because they received help very late, if at all.

What are the characteristics of a crisis-proof company?

Above all, this is a healthy equity base.

A family business owner also takes out a mortgage on their house to save the company they built or inherited.

There is an emotional connection there, also to the employees and the region.

If you just paint jobs like that, you lose face in the place.

A manager of any large corporation would never bring his private assets to the company.

Family businesses also think long-term.

It's not about skimming every possible profit from the company, but rather investing in innovation and reserves.

The introduction of a wealth tax is currently being discussed - also in order to distribute the costs of the pandemic more on the shoulders of the wealthy.

How do you find that?

Especially with the experience from the financial and corona crisis, all demands for inventory taxation are dangerous.

Most of the wealth is in companies.

If you buy a 5G-capable high-tech machine today, it is expensive and you will not get 100 percent financing from any bank.

That is not possible without reserves in the company.

In order to create the necessary capital, personnel costs would then have to be reduced, for example.

What we really need to meet the cost of the crisis is growth.

That was already proven in 2008 during the financial crisis: through growth we brought the state considerably more tax income than the substance could have been squeezed away.

What needs to be done now to stimulate this growth?

If you don't give a cow hay, you can't milk it. The state quota, i.e. the part of a country's income that the state claims, grows annually, and the social budget grows with it, currently it makes up 30.3 percent of the gross domestic product. You have to consider whether you could not spend less instead of charging more and more taxes. There are also very outdated structures, as was clearly seen in the crisis. Digitization didn't work at the front and back, the bureaucracy slowed down the processes considerably. If you are planning a large project today, it can sometimes take decades. All of that makes it so difficult to move forward. We have to learn again that it is private investment that has made this country great. But if other framework conditions such as CO2 prices rise now,you have to ask yourself how we can stay competitive.

But the energy transition has to be paid for somehow.

To do this, however, our Renewable Energy Sources Act must be reformed.

Above all, one would have to ensure that self-generated energy is not burdened with all sorts of taxes.

Why are companies not building heat couplings in sufficient quantities?

Because it comes with additional burdens.

Big events are banned and beer sales have plummeted - how do you go through the crisis as head of the Kaltenberger Ritterspiele and the König Ludwig Brewery?

We make a large part of our beer sales through the catering trade, which has of course been eliminated, but we can offset a part with bottled beer sales.

The knight tournament is a different story, we have seven to eight major events here every year that have not been allowed to take place for two years.

Fortunately, we can survive to some extent because we are one of the few who have not taken out insurance against pandemic damage, but against interference by the authorities.

Can major events even work under Corona conditions?

With an opening - and this applies to all major events - the problems do not stop: With the current distance rules, we could achieve a maximum of 20 percent occupancy, but we need at least 70 percent to get to zero at all.

And events in the Middle Ages are explicitly excluded from cultural funding.

In addition, it will be difficult in the future to get the specialists at all because many have now had to move to other professions.

List of rubric lists: © Prinz Luitpold

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-06-24

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