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发信人: Porod (扬之水◎Love in One Day), 信区: English
标题: Unfair and amateurish
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (Sat Apr 28 07:53:56 2007), 转信

Apr 26th 2007 | BERLIN
From The Economist print edition
How not to do a boardroom coup

Reuters

JUST days after the resignation of Heinrich von Pierer as head of the supervisory
board of Siemens, the leadership crisis at Europe’s biggest engineering
group claimed a new victim. On Wednesday April 25th Klaus Kleinfeld, the
chief executive, said he would no longer be available to extend his contract
, which finishes at the end of September. “In times like these, the company
needs clarity about its leadership,” he said at the meeting of the company
’s supervisory board in Munich.

The board’s Machiavellian manoeuvres had given him little choice but to
quit. In the six days between Mr von Pierer’s announced resignation and
the board meeting, board members circulated rumours about their desire for
a successor to Mr Kleinfeld to help the firm make a fresh start as it grapples
with three separate criminal investigations into alleged bribery.

One director, Josef Ackermann, the boss of Deutsche Bank, is keen to repair
his reputation after a scandal over bonuses awarded to former executives
at Mannesmann, a mobile operator that was taken over by Vodafone. And Gerhard
Cromme, who replaced Mr von Pierer as head of Siemens’ supervisory board
, wants to reinforce his image as the pioneer of corporate-governance reform
in Germany.

Faced with persistent speculation about his future as boss of Siemens, Mr
Kleinfeld told the 20-strong board before their gathering that he would
leave the company if they did not make a firm commitment to renew his contract
. When he did not get the two-thirds majority he needed he announced his
departure, even before the meeting had ended.

Siemens is losing a capable leader. The group is in much better shape today
than it was in January 2005 when Mr Kleinfeld took over. On April 24th Siemens
reported a 10% increase in revenue, to €20.63 billion ($27 billion) and
operating profits up by 36% for the three months to the end of March. So
far Mr Kleinfeld’s integrity is unblemished. Investigations by Debevoise
& Plimpton, a law firm, have found no indications of any misconduct by him
.

Mr Kleinfeld’s main problem was his lack of allies in Germany’s chummy
corporate elite. His American management methods seemed brash to industrialists
and union representatives on Siemens’s board, who were more used to Germany
’s consensual style of corporate leadership. The 49-year-old Mr Kleinfeld
will have no difficulty finding a new high-profile job in America. He rose
to become the heir apparent at Siemens while running its American operations
for three years, during which he oversaw its listing on the New York Stock
Exchange. As a board member at both Citigroup, a big American bank, and
Alcoa, an American aluminium firm, he is well connected.

Who will take his place? Mr Ackermann and Mr Cromme are in touch with Wolfgang
Reitzle, the boss of Linde, an industrial-gases group, whom they would like
to make boss of Siemens. Mr Reitzle says he wants to stay at Linde. Very
few top managers have intimate knowledge of Siemens’s sprawling businesses
, ranging from medical equipment to trains. Messrs Ackermann and Cromme may
come to regret their attempt to appear as the enforcers of their firm’s
“clean hands” policy.
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困境有一种特殊的科学价值，有智慧的人是不会放弃这个通过它而进行学习的机会的。　

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English 版 (精华区)