PreussenElektra's nuclear generating assets have weighed heavily of late on Veba's stock, and so they should.
Larry Solomon ran the UAW local in Decatur, Illinois, when the Caterpillar VEBA was established.
Others are expected to follow: Viag, Veba and Bayer may soon all spin off underperforming units.
Key to Act II's focus-and-growth strategy is the idea that Veba's core businesses should be globalized wherever possible.
An affable, athletic man, Hartmann, now 60, calmly agreed that a new phase in managing Veba has begun.
Assuming the sale moves forward as expected, Pension Plan and VEBA funding will be transferred to the purchaser.
Even at Veba, the most transparent and focused of the three, there is still plenty of conglomerate-style thinking.
This is Veba's oldest and biggest asset, accounting for 20% of Veba's revenues last year and 57% of profits.
Veba owns 51.25% of the O.tel.o venture, with German utility RWE owning 48.75%.
Veba is scouting for deals in neighbouring countries and in America, where its shares were listed two years ago.
The trust, VEBA, got the stake under terms of the 2009 bailout of Chrysler by Fiat and the U.S. taxpayer.
FORBES: Fiat Seeks 'Market-Relevant' Value For VEBA Chrysler Stake
Veba was a holy mess at the time, a hodgepodge of more than 60 scattered businesses employing 130, 000 not-very-productive workers.
In 1998, Caterpillar set up a VEBA, as the trust funds are called, this stands for Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Association.
Sniffing Germany's new winds of liberalization for opportunity, Hartmann decided to launch a brand new business for Veba: its O.tel.o telecommunications group.
Last month Schrder picked a Veba man, Werner Mller, a board member at Veba's coal power operations, to become Germany's Economics Minister.
Before the VEBA, Solomon says, one of the benefits of being a UAW worker in Caterpillar was free retiree health care for life.
Last month, a group of German business leaders, including Veba's Mr Hartmann, began to draft a set of corporate standards for listed companies.
From around DM35 a share in early 1993, Veba's stock soared to over DM130 early this year, handily outpacing the DAX index (see chart).
Beyond that, Schrder has a long relationship with Hartmann and Veba.
Veba has invested DM8 billion in telecommunications since 1994 (nearly 20% of its capital expenditures) and plans to invest at least DM1.8 billion more by 2003.
In April 1993 a handsome lawyer named Ulrich Hartmann was named chief executive of Veba AG, Germany's fourth- largest industrial combine (after Daimler-Benz, Siemens and Volkswagen).
All of which means that Schrder is likely to look after his old Veba friends, as Hartmann works to fend off the Greens' most onerous antinuclear demands.
O.tel.o overall, he says, will turn cash-flow positive in 2002, a big swing from this year's likely loss of DM2 billion, half of which is eaten by Veba.
To see how Hartmann plans to meet these challenges, we called on him in his spacious office atop Veba's modern steel-and-black-marble headquarters building in a quiet Dsseldorf neighborhood.
During Act I Hartmann's job was the fairly straightforward one of getting rid of businesses and product lines that did not fit well with Veba's core operating companies.
Ron Gettelfinger, the head of UAW, says the VEBA being proposed under this new contract will secure the health care benefits of General Motors retirees for 80 years.
The two sides are at odds over how to interpret a 2009 deal that gives Fiat the right to buy 16.6 percent of Chrysler from VEBA in five stages.
FORBES: Fiat Seeks 'Market-Relevant' Value For VEBA Chrysler Stake
And Veba this week sacked the head of Stinnes, its distribution division, after he insisted on making an acquisition that Veba's finance people feared might weaken its share price.
Both can be integrated without great pain into PreussenElektra's existing grid -- meaning, in essence, that Veba will be able to extract more economies from PreussenElektra's power generating and distribution assets.
Germany's power and telecommunications industries, where Hartmann has directed 56% of Veba's capital spending since 1995, are feeling the harsh winds of liberalization and competition, creating relentless pressure on prices and margins.
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