Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]These are the main points from an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine before the annual meeting: - - Rüdiger Beuttenmüller (29) wants to oust Hans Friedrichs (the ex German Minister of Economics) and have him replaced by José Ignacio López ex Purchasing Director at Volkswagen as Chairman of the Board because Friedrichs has not done enough - - Friedrich says he has fired Hofmann and hired Hanns-Peter Cohn as General Manager and Cohn has taken steps to solve the problems which were mainly the high cost level, distribution and non-availability of products - - Work force is against López but support Cohn (who is not under fire from RB). - - RB wants to make more out of the Leica name, and has a Hamburg investor who is able and willing to invest money in developing Leica - - RB's request to put the Friedrichs/López matter on the agenda will be disregarded ata the annual meeting as RB cannot prove that he has held at least 5% of the shares for more than three months. He says he can now prove it and he has therefore requested an extra ordinary shareholders meeting but Leica says the request did not meet formal requirements and will be disregarded. - - RB says he not only has 5% of the shares, but the support of 15-20% of the shareholders. (Seven percent are held by management and 13.8% by the Swiss shareholder Schmidtheiny). ...and here is what they wrote after the annual meeting: - - employees and shareholdes are very unhappy with the way RB operates. Workers' council say the company is on the right way and they object to the way RB tries to undermine their loyalty to management. (He had run ads in the local newspaper but as a result 442 employees signed a subsequent advert supporting Cohn and protesting against RB.) - - a small shareholder interest group (not only at Leica) are also against RB/López who they say has no experience in marketing a cult object such as Leica. - -of the shares present, about 18% were represented by RB, and the rest voted for the proposals of management (Will they have time to design new products with all these fights going on?) - -- christer almqvist eichenstrasse 57, d-20255 hamburg, fon +49-40-407111 fax +49-40-4908440 14 rue de la hauteur, f-50590 regnéville-sur-mer, fon+fax +33-233 45 35 58