People

BASF: New Faces on the Board of Executive Directors of BASF

The Supervisory Board of BASF SE appointed Saori Dubourg (head of Health & Nutrition division) and Dr. Markus Kamieth (Head of Coating division) to the Board of Executive Directors, effective May 13, 2017.
Margret Suckale (60) will retire with the expiration of her contract following the annual shareholders’ meeting on May 12, 2017. At the same time, Dr. Harald Schwager (56) will leave BASF’s Board of Executive Directors in support of long-term succession planning. Schwager was appointed to the Board in 2008 and is currently responsible for the divisions Construction Chemicals; Crop Protection; Bioscience Research; and Region Europe. Suckale has been on the Board since 2011. She is Industrial Relations Director and responsible for the division’s engineering & maintenance; environmental protection, health & safety; European site & network management; and human resources.

GfK: Shares might become a sparsity

2016 was a demanding year for GfK´s shareholders. Following the release of a profit-warning in early August, the share price collapsed. A few days later the announcement that the CEO, Matthias Hartmann, will leave the company as of Dec. 31, 2016, due to different views regarding the long-term direction of the business between him and the majority shareholder, GfK Verein, followed. In addition, the chairman of the Supervisory Board, Arno Mahlert, resigned, effective Sept. 12, 2016, due to differences of opinions in the cooperation with the majority shareholder.

The combination of profit-warning and corporate governance issues is not really what shareholders like, and accordingly the share price got under pressure. However, in early December the company surprised the market with the announcement regarding a voluntary public tender offer for GfK via a holding company (Acceleratio Capital N.V.) controlled by funds advised by KKR.

The Management Board and the Supervisory Board of GfK welcomed the all-cash-offer at €43.50 per outstanding publicly traded share, which represents a 44% weighted premium on the three months volume weighted average share price prior to the announcement. The offer was published on Dec. 21, 2016, and runs until Feb. 10, 2017. The minimum acceptance condition is 18.54% of the equity of GfK, while GfK Verein will retain its 56.46% holding.
What looked like easy sledding at first glance became a severe setback in Germany with the computer entrepreneur Michael Dell joining the scene via his MSD Capital vehicle, acquiring a 6.45% holding in GfK. According to an article in the German financial paper Handelsblatt, Dell probably bought his shares close to the offer price. The same may be true for Primestone Capital, who raised its stake in GfK from 3.21% to 5.00%.