Sigmar Gabriel has resigned as chairman of the supervisory board of Thyssenkrupp Steel. In an interview, he explains how the situation could escalate to such an extent.
Mr. Gabriel, why are you resigning as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Thyssenkrupp’s steel division?
It can’t go on any longer. The trust in the CEO of Thyssenkrupp AG, Miguel López, and in his supervisory board member Siegfried Russwurm is completely gone. We cannot continue to work together on this basis. In recent weeks, Mr. López has constantly intervened directly in the steel division, bypassing us, without informing us and preventing the CEO there from doing his work. He has created conditions like in a gulag. (Soviet penal and labor camp, editor’s note) This is not my formulation, but that of people from the company. Under these conditions, we cannot do what Martina Merz, Mr López’s predecessor, asked us to do. We should ensure that in this process of replacing the steel division, the interests of the people are also represented, and not just the capital owners.
This is the fourth time that the steel division has failed to become independent. What was the reason for this failure?
Ultimately, it failed because of money. The steel division needs sufficient funding to be independent, and we couldn’t agree on a sum. We were missing between 1.5 and 2.5 billion euros. We wanted the parent company to raise this sum. Mr. López was of the opinion that the steel division could generate this amount itself. But that is simply unrealistic, as the steel board made clear to him. He can’t just increase earnings in the current phase or sales figures. And we can’t just sell parts of the company that actually generate 85 million euros in earnings every year. And López was so upset about this that he came to me very early on and said: “The whole proposal has to go. They can’t do it.”
What did you tell him?
If a spin-off fails four times over and over again because of the same amount, then it might not be the fault of the board of directors, but rather the structural problems that the company has. I advised him that we should solve the structural problems now and then talk about the spin-off.
Nevertheless, the situation has escalated.
We were further ahead than ever before. The employees were prepared to sell or close HKM. They were prepared to reduce capacity by two million to nine million tons of steel. We managed all of this, by mutual agreement.
López wanted to almost halve the capacity?
You have to ask him yourself. That’s what IG Metall says. He denies it.
Was there a dispute over the dowry?
This is not a dowry, but funding. If they want to take the subsidiary public, then it must be equipped by its owner so that it can do this. But Mr. López has it in his head that he is no longer the owner, but is behaving like a bank towards Stahl AG. That means he wants to give them a loan – and not even a sufficient one. We then discussed the idea in the supervisory board anyway and produced a document that everyone agreed to, including Mr. López. I hadn’t even returned home to Goslar when Mr. López had already put out a press release in which he once again talked the board into the ground. I couldn’t believe it, because we had just agreed to do the opposite.
You say López is the problem. How do you explain that he has the support of the owners and the Thyssenkrupp supervisory board?
I suspect that they have lost patience. They have been trying to get rid of the steel for 20 years and no one has succeeded. And there are also a few who blame IG Metall and want them to give in. Three days ago there was a full broadside against the employees and the unions who are afraid for their jobs. They had organized a vigil and shut down a unit for two hours.
Where do you see the mistakes?
In management. They sunk 17 billion euros into a steelworks in the Brazilian swamp. IG Metall is not to blame for the fact that the parent company of Stahl AG has banned the purchase of CO2 certificates. Other companies in Germany are full of them. We have to keep buying them as prices rise. The union is not to blame for the fact that the steel board was banned from hedging energy. IG Metall is not to blame for the fact that the company has not invested in modernization for years because it was always hoping that a potential buyer would do it. That is the story. The company has so many legacy issues. These legacy issues must first be cleared up.
The Krupp Foundation also clearly fully supports López. Does that make you angry?
I’m not angry. But they just don’t understand. This management here has finally got to work. They’re firing a CTO who has been there for a year and a half and whose measures have significantly improved the company’s really poor performance.
What is gained through new management?
Nothing. The company only loses time and money. The problems remain. Another critical point is that the change is taking place at a time when the steel company is carrying out gigantic large-scale projects. They are building new steel plants, a DRI plant for the production of green steel, and they are converting a casting and rolling plant while it is still in operation. No one in the world has ever done that before. If that goes wrong, the German car industry will come to a standstill. None of this is rational. There is a lack of cool-headedness. In my opinion, the whole conflict is completely pointless. And the core problem is not even being tackled.
That would be there?
The company is still suffering from the Thyssenkrupp merger. Other steelworks have one location. They are optimizing their process chains there. We have 14 locations with 35 units. We have to get to work on that. We haven’t even started negotiating with the unions yet. We are talking about staff cuts and long periods of time, because you can’t just shut down a unit like that and build a new one somewhere else. But it will all come back.
Thyssenkrupp’s steel division is receiving a lot of state money for the transformation to green steel. Is this transformation now in danger?
Not because of what has happened now. But there are indications that it will be too expensive in the end despite the subsidies. And in the end, no marketable green steel will emerge. There will be another debate about the subsidies and production of green steel. But it is also clear that without Thyssenkrupp there will be no hydrogen network. We are the most important customer.
Source: Stern
