Secluded heirs to the founder of Siemen called for a return to calm at the top of the German engineering giant, amid a continuing dispute over the leadership of the company’s supervisory board

September 17, 2013 Leave a comment

September 15, 2013, 4:18 p.m. ET

Siemens Heirs Ask for Calm

Leadership Dispute Roils German Firm’s Supervisory Board

WILLIAM BOSTON

BERLIN—Heirs to the founder of Siemens AG SIE.XE +1.21% called for a return to calm at the top of the German engineering giant, amid a continuing dispute over the leadership of the company’s supervisory board. The intervention this weekend by the usually secluded heirs of Werner von Siemens, who founded the company in 1847, is a rare move and could indicate that a younger generation of successors is keen to play a more active—and public—role in Siemens, one of Germany’s biggest manufacturers. The continued jockeying for position among Siemens’s various stakeholders also could be a signal that more far-reaching change at the upper echelons of the 166-year-old company is coming soon. “It is important to the family that calm is restored,” said Nathalie von Siemens, a great-great granddaughter of the founder, in comments published by the weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on Sunday. “As a family, we have a close emotional connection to the company. We try to keep the traditions of the founding fathers alive.” Ms. von Siemens declined to comment further.Siemens management has faced a state of upheaval since the end of July, when the former chief executive, Peter Löscher, was ousted after Siemens repeatedly missed profit targets. Mr. Löscher was succeeded by his chief financial officer, the 30-year Siemens veteran Joe Kaeser.

Last week, Josef Ackermann, the former chief of Deutsche Bank AG,DBK.XE +0.69% announced his resignation from the Siemens supervisory board. Mr. Ackermann and two other supervisory-board members—Michael Diekmann, chief executive of insurance group Allianz ALV.XE +2.53% SE, and Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller, managing director of laser maker Trumpf Group—challenged the decision by board Chairman Gerhard Cromme to dismiss Mr. Löscher.

Unlike in the U.S., German companies have a two-tier board structure, with a management board around the chief executive that runs the day-to-day operations and a supervisory board that is similar to a U.S. board of directors.

With no sign that the boardroom turmoil is ending, the Siemens family heirs appear concerned about the company’s public image. The family’s intervention also likely reflects a discussion over their future representation on the Siemens supervisory board.

Ms. von Siemens is believed to be keen to represent the family when the current representative, Gerd von Brandenstein, retires, which he is expected to do at the end of the year, according to a person who is familiar with the family. Ms. von Siemens was born in 1971 and worked for Siemens in investor relations, public affairs and corporate strategy before in January becoming managing director of the Siemens Foundation, a nonprofit group that sponsors education and development projects.

The Siemens family heirs are the company’s largest single investor, holding about 6% of the shares. Their power in the company is largely symbolic, based on their role as the keepers of the corporate tradition, and they don’t own a controlling stake.

Siemens declined to comment on Ms. von Siemens’s interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on Sunday.

One thing seems certain: The turmoil in Siemens’s leadership didn’t end when Mr. Ackermann announced his resignation. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported Friday that individual Siemens board members have started a search for a successor to Mr. Cromme.

A Siemens spokesman declined to comment on the Süddeutsche Zeitung report, saying the company doesn’t discuss matters of the supervisory board. Mr. Cromme couldn’t be reached for comment.

Filed under Life, Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment