The automotive supplier
Continental
has long lacked momentum.
The stock market value has been bobbing around 20 billion euros for years, and in 2021 the group from Hanover made a loss.
The new boss
Nikolai Setzer
has not yet been able to convince the shareholders either.
All the more music is in the secret project, which was set up under Setzer's predecessor
Elmar Degenhart
: Under the project name "Voyage", the strategists calculated the spin-off and the IPO of individual divisions.
In the meantime, a much larger solution has emerged from these business games.
According to the motto "four wins", Continental would be divided into at least four individual companies.
The
autonomous driving
divisions and the
ContiTech
plant construction could be sold or placed on the capital market.
The
automotive
division could also be easily separated from the group as a whole.
The nucleus of Continental
would remain with the
tire and rubber business .
These four individual parts would be worth more than 40 billion euros on the stock exchange, according to the calculations of the strategists.
That is more than twice as much as today's Conti conglomerate.
However, such a radical division scenario requires managers with assertiveness.
A job for the head of the supervisory board ,
Wolfgang Reitzle
(72), as our car expert Michael Freitag writes.
Reitzle's biggest hurdle: He still has to convince Conti's major shareholder
Georg Schaeffler
of the project.
However, the “four wins” scenario was well received by other shareholders on Thursday: Continental shares were among the biggest winners in the Dax today.
The business news of the day:
Commerzbank is making money again:
Commerzbank made a profit of 430 million euros in 2021 - despite high costs for the bank's restructuring.
Earnings from the venture capital division CommerzVentures and commissions from securities trading played a large part in this.
For the current financial year, bank boss Manfred Knof wants to pay a dividend again.
VW and Huawei are negotiating a billion dollar deal in China:
Volkswagen is currently struggling with problems in its most important market, China.
The electric cars of the ID family in particular are not as well received in China as expected.
According to information from manager magazin, an alliance with the Chinese tech giant
Huawei
is now in the offing.
VW is considering acquiring a Huawei unit specializing in
autonomous driving
.
You can read exclusively on manager-magazin.de how far the plans have progressed.
The personality of the day:
Star lawyer Gerhard Strate reports Olaf Scholz
: The prominent criminal defense lawyer
Gerhard Strate
likes to play on the big stage.
In the VW diesel scandal, he represented ex-Volkswagen leader
Ferdinand Piëch
.
He himself filed a complaint
against the ex-head of HSH Nordbank,
Dirk Nonnenmacher .
Now Strate is trying to bring down the most powerful man in the republic with a complaint: Chancellor
Olaf Scholz
.
Scholz held his "protective hand" over the Warburg Bank during his tenure as mayor of Hamburg, Strate justified his complaint.
The decision by the Hamburg tax authorities to waive a tax refund worth millions in the wake of the Cum-Ex scandal in 2016 was an "arbitrary act".
Scholz and his successor
Peter Tschentscher
have thus become "assistants of the tax evaders from the Warburg Bank," writes Strate.
He reported Tschentscher as well as Scholz for aiding and abetting tax evasion.
He also accuses Scholz of unsworn false statements.
What else kept us busy:
Almost 90 million euros in bonuses for the Springer board:
Thanks to generous bonuses, the
top managers of the Berlin media group
Axel Springer are among the best-paid executives in the country.
CEO Mathias Döpfner alone beckons a special payment in the double-digit million range.
The three
current board members Mathias Döpfner
,
Jan Bayer and Julian Deutz as well as ex-board member Andreas Wiele
owe the windfall primarily to the US investor KKR.
KR's entry triggered a jump in the Springer share price in 2019, making the payments possible in the first place.
My recommendation for the evening:
The Mini car brand has a cult following
, but the car
manufacturer BMW
hasn't really enjoyed Mini for years.
Since the restart in 2000, the cute models have only been in the black with difficulty.
Mini squeezes the margin of the otherwise highly profitable carmaker from Bavaria.
Now BMW boss
Oliver Zipse
is pushing for a radical solution: the Mini as we know it today should only be available for a limited time.
The future electric mini is to be manufactured by partner
Great Wall
in China and marketed worldwide.
Michael Freitag and Angela Maier have written down for you what BMW's Mini plans are all about in detail.
Cordially, your Kai Lange