|
|
The problems at e.g. Bayer, Deutsche Bank or VW coincide with hand-wringing over the country’s failure to translate its manufacturing and engineering prowess into tech leadership, or create world-beating companies at the rate of the US or China.
While Germany still has plenty of scandal-free world-beaters, governance problems are emerging just when reformers are suggesting US companies, say, should start to look a little more German. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act would require large US companies to take interests of workers, customers and communities into account along with shareholders — and allow employees to elect 40 per cent of boards of directors. Both are defining features of German capitalism.
Germany, meanwhile, has been encouraged in the past two decades to shift to a more US-style focus on shareholder value.
A bigger problem can be the dynamics of Germany’s two-tier structure — where management boards run operations, overseen by non-executive supervisory boards of investor and staff representatives.
Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)