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Martin Kind
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Rainer Droese / localpic / IMAGO
Martin Kind, majority shareholder of second division club Hannover 96, won the first legal dispute against the club.
Kind can continue to work as managing director of Hannover 96 Management GmbH.
This was decided by the Hanover Regional Court in summary proceedings on Tuesday.
"The procedural controller is allowed to continue to exercise his office," said judge Carsten Peter Schulze.
In concrete terms, this means that the dismissal is not effective until the main proceedings as long as the Supervisory Board of Management GmbH, which is composed of two representatives each from the child side and the association side, does not decide on the dismissal.
But the conflict is unlikely to be resolved.
The parent club is likely to appeal against the decision, the next instance is the Higher Regional Court in Celle.
Maximum escalation level
The eV recalled Kind as managing director of Hannover 96 Management GmbH at the end of July.
The parent association thus chose the maximum level of escalation and Kind defended himself legally.
Thanks to an interim order from the district court, he was allowed to continue working as managing director until the date of the oral hearing.
Kind's commitment has been evaluated very differently within the association for years.
While some emphasize the financial merits of the 78-year-old for the club, others accuse him of distance to football and going it alone.
The specific reasons for the dismissal have not yet been clearly communicated.
Background 50+1 rule
Rather, individual, smaller proxy conflicts seem to have exhausted the already strained relationship from the point of view of the parent club.
Among other things, it is about the accusation of having "repeatedly and seriously violated instructions and contractual agreements", which the child side denied.
The whole dispute must always be classified in the context of a complicated association structure: Kind is the majority shareholder of Hannover 96 Sales&Service GmbH&Co.
KG, which owns 100 percent of the professional football KGaA.
However, since the 50+1 rule in Germany stipulates that the parent association must always have the majority of votes in an outsourced corporation, the managing directors of the KGaA are appointed by Hannover 96 Management GmbH.
It is 100 percent owned by the parent club.
krä/dpa/sid
