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The Mannesmann Trial and the Role of the Courts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Peter Kolla

Extract

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The Financial Times billed the Mannesmann trial, which began on January 21, 2004 and where final arguments by the prosecution and by the defense are scheduled for June 30, July 8 and 14, 2004 before the Regional Court (Landgericht) in Düsseldorf, as the “biggest criminal trial in German corporate history.” The backdrop for the trial was the January 2000 hostile takeover of Mannesmann AG, the once massive German telecommunications and engineering company that employed over 130,000 people. Vodafone Airtouch, the British telecommunications giant, had initially offered €101 billion for Mannesmann but only succeeded in their takeover by sweetening the price to €178 billion. Consequently, the Mannesmann takeover is still the largest the world has ever seen. The six defendants include towering figures in corporate Germany, most notably Josef Ackermann, the current chief executive of Germany's largest bank, Deutsche Bank and former member of Mannesmann's supervisory board (Aufsichtsrat). The enormity of the companies and personalities involved stretched the trial's magnitude beyond the confines of this single takeover. Reporting for their global business audience, the Financial Times conflated the trial to an indictment of Germany's entire system of capitalism. “What is on trial here is the free market itself,” wrote Wolfgang Munchau, their continental European business columnist.

Type
Private Law
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 7 , 01 July 2004 , pp. 829 - 847
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by German Law Journal GbR 

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