Escalation at Thyssenkrupp
Gabriel: “If this goes wrong, the auto industry will come to a standstill”
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After the departure of the steel management team at Thyssenkrupp and the top of the supervisory board, the future of the division remains open. The resigned chief supervisor Gabriel is again sharply criticizing the management of the parent company. The federal government intervenes from Berlin.
After his resignation as chairman of the supervisory board of the Thyssenkrupp steel division, Sigmar Gabriel criticized the management and owners of the parent company. “The company is just losing time and money. The problems remain,” the former Federal Minister of Economics told the business magazine “Capital”. “The whole conflict is completely nonsensical.” He criticized the extremely bad timing for the escalation. “The change is taking place in a phase where gigantic large-scale projects are underway in the steel company. They are building new steel plants there, a DRI plant for the production of green steel and they are converting a casting-rolling plant during ongoing operations. Nobody has done that yet world made.” He warned: “If this goes wrong, the German auto industry will come to a standstill.”
He cited a broken relationship of trust with Thyssenkrupp CEO Miguel López as the reasons for his resignation. “In the past few weeks, Mr. López has constantly intervened directly in the steel division, bypassing us without informing us and preventing the CEO there from doing his work. He has created conditions like a gulag,” said Gabriel. That wasn't his wording, “but rather from people in the company.” The fact that López still has supporters like the Krupp Foundation doesn't bother him. “I'm not angry. But they just didn't understand.”
Mistakes over the years
There was a main dispute over the necessary financial resources for the steel subsidiary so that it could operate independently. “If you want to put the subsidiary on the stock exchange, then the owner must equip it in such a way that it can do that.” López, however, “no longer wants to be the owner, but rather behaves towards Stahl AG like a bank. That means he wants to give it a loan – and not even enough.”
With this attempt, the independence of the steel division has failed for the fourth time – each time between 1.5 billion and 2.5 billion euros were missing. Gabriel blamed years of management mistakes for the division's crisis. For him, these include the ultimately failed, billion-dollar attempt to build a plant in Brazil, missed opportunities in certificate trading and postponed structural reforms.
Habeck warns the top management
Meanwhile, the federal government has also criticized the company's management. “We expect those responsible there to return to their actual tasks,” said a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Economics. They would have to “take responsibility, for the company, for the employees” and also for the future of its steel division.
Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck had previously expressed concern. “The situation at Thyssenkrupp has become very unforgiving on all sides,” he told the “Rheinische Post”. This is “not a good situation”. Habeck called for the ecological restructuring of the steel division, which was subsidized by the federal and state governments to the tune of around two billion euros, to be continued despite current difficulties.
“The federal and state governments have provided concrete support to secure the steel location of Duisburg and North Rhine-Westphalia. But the corporate side must also do its part to ensure that the transformation is successful and that sustainable steel production is secured in Germany as a business location,” said Habeck.
