Buhlmann's Corner

Good governance volatile and colourful?

What colour is good corporate governance; is it brown and dirty, blue and interim or - when then, please - green and clean.

What does green electricity actually mean? Is it regeneratively produced energy, that green consumption that has to be replenished by lignite-fired power generation because of demand? What do we think of wind power being used x times green and then being replaced by brown? Simply put, doesn't this look like green-washing?

Quite a few companies claim green governance while distancing themselves at a virtual distance from the owners? Why not schedule an AGM in the summer when the viral activity is weakening, as we have seen in the last two years.

It's kind of like sponsoring Thomas Bach (International Olympic Committee). After fat cat Toyota pulled out of sponsorship, Bach welcomed Japan's Tepco. Tepco operated, among other things, the nuclear reactors that exploded in 2011, is listed on the stock exchange and celebrates its annual general meeting < http://vip-cg.com/hv-agenda.php?l=en&debug=&region=&filter=tepco&andfilter=&fidatum=&fidatum_to=>(link should be preserved") on 29 June 2022 as Tokyo Electric Poweror Corp Holding. This is taxonomy for sportsmen.

In Germany, governance and especially corporate governance are just colourless, just like the bushman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Buschmann) moving to the savannah. The crown now lies with the Federal Statistical Office; it has been asked to carry out a study which should "lead to the reduction of bureaucracy and for better regulation". This with such glorious questions as:

"How often did the General Meeting Committee meet each year?"

One of the answers offered, by the way, is: 1,000.

Also very nice and of experience and knowledge equally unclouded:

"What is your function in relation to the General Meeting Committee?:

(multiple answers possible) x Member of the committee

- (Vice) Chairperson of the committee

- Organiser or responsible for finances and present at the meeting  

- Organiser or responsible for finances and not present at the meeting".

One can only hope and pray that these principals and such studies do not find their way to the Ministry of Justice. Maybe the question about the turnover size of the responding company gives hope, here the offered answer frame ends at 50 million € - after that only "rest of world" comes. Then all DAXes should be safe?

Wie war zu Cölln es doch vordem mit Heinzelmännchen so bequem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinzelm%C3%A4nnchen) - when entrepreneurial personalities could do without special rights, not so much because of their academic successes in "Good Corporate Governance" but because of human greatness and genuine farsightedness. Under the aegis of Peter C. von Siemens, multiple voting rights were abolished without replacement on 18 February 1999, agenda item 10. Governance then had contour and colour. Peter von Siemens passed away on 11 December 2021.