The sale of DB Schenker to the Danish competitor DSV is a done deal. 14 billion euros are to flow to Deutsche Bahn, and thousands of employees will have to fear for their jobs in return. Deutsche Bahn wants to use the revenue to restructure its loss-making passenger transport. It is not uncommon for German companies to sell important divisions or even the entire group abroad. We have collected the seven most expensive takeovers of the past 30 years. Despite all the pessimism about the sale of German companies, it should also be mentioned that German companies are almost as likely to use competitors abroad. For example, Bayer Monsanto in 2016 for around 55 billion dollars, already in 1998 Mercedes-Benz bought the US competitor Chrysler for around 40.5 billion dollars. Here are the most expensive sales – and what was behind them.
7. Osram (2020) – 4.6 billion euros
The lighting manufacturer Osram did not start as a company, but as a brand of the Deutsche Gasglühlicht-Anstalt, which sold the first incandescent lamps with a tungsten filament under this name from 1906. It was not until 1920 that it became the Osram company in a consortium of AEG, Siemens and the Deutsche Gasglühlicht-Anstalt. In the 1930s, Osram increased its market share in Germany to an impressive 70 percent. In 1978, Osram took over Siemens all shares in Osram and listed the subsidiary on the stock exchange as an independent company in 2012.
However, it only stayed there for eight years. Because Siemens completely reorganized the group in the 2010s and the lighting business no longer fit the new strategy, Osram was sold. The Austrian sensor manufacturer ams won the contract in 2020 for around 4.6 billion euros. The Osram brand has lived on there since then, but lamps for the private customer market are no longer produced.
6. Kuka (2016) – 4.6 billion euros
The sale of the robot manufacturer Cry to the Chinese giant Midea in 2016 caused a great stir. The federal government intervened and tried to persuade German companies to take over the Augsburg-based company. After all, a future technology such as robotics should not be sold to foreign countries. But all the excitement was in vain. Midea’s offer, 35 percent above the company’s value at the time, was unbeatable.
Kuka has been around since 1898. When it was founded, the Bavarian company produced welding machines. It is named after its founder, Johann Josef K or u nd Jakob K nappich, as well as the founding location A ugsburg. Kuka later produced garbage trucks and bodies for other vehicles, including for the German army. It was not until 1973 that the production of industrial robots began. At the time of the takeover, Kuka had around 14,000 employees. Despite the purchase by Midea, little has changed to this day, although some jobs have been relocated to new factories in China.
5. Stada (2017) – 5.3 billion euros
Stada is one of the largest German pharmaceutical companies. In addition to generics such as paracetamol, it sells the cold remedy Grippostad C, the electrolyte powder Elotrans and the pain cream Mobilat. The company was founded in Dresden in 1895 – at that time as a cooperative of local pharmacists. Stada has only been producing medicines itself since 1975. The company went public in 1993 and was listed on the stock exchange in 2001. MDAX the second most important German stock index after the DAX.
Because Stada mainly focused on the production of generics, i.e. well-known drugs that any company can produce, the business was highly competitive. Investors repeatedly pushed for a reorientation of the company. When a leadership crisis with several changes in the management board occurred in the mid-2010s, US investors saw the opportunity for a takeover. Originally, Bain Capital and Cinven made a joint bid for Stada, but in the end the former prevailed alone.
4. Schenker (2024) – 14 billion euros
The purchase of Deutsche Bahn subsidiary Schenker by Danish competitor DSV was recently approved. Sale now finalized – Danish logistics group DSV buys Deutsche Bahn subsidiary Schenker Deutsche Bahn is forced to sell its actually profitable logistics division in order to use the proceeds to at least make the company’s debts of around 30 billion euros more bearable and to be able to concentrate more on passenger and freight transport in the future. The sale is not expected to take effect until 2025.
Gottfried Schenker, a Swiss, founded the company named after him in Vienna in 1872 as a forwarding company. Just one year later, he had the brilliant idea of combining many small deliveries into larger units and opened a train service on the Vienna-Paris route. His own shipping line followed in 1879, and a travel agency in 1880. By 1891, Schenker had achieved a monopoly on freight transport in Europe.
The move to Germany followed in 1928. Within three years, the Deutsche Reichsbahn secretly took over Schenker in order to stabilize its own freight business. In 1949, Schenker came into the possession of the Deutsche Bundesbahn. In 1991, the Deutsche Bundesbahn sold Schenker to its competitor Stinnes, which in turn was bought by the Deutsche Bahn in 2002 – and thus Schenker came back.
3. ThyssenKrupp (elevator division, 2020) – 17.2 billion euros
The Group ThyssenKrupp has only been around since 1999, but the two companies from which it emerged are among the most important in German industrial history. Friedrich Krupp AG was spun off in 1903 from the family business in Essen, which had existed since 1800, and quickly established itself as a giant of German heavy industry. Thyssen AG was founded in 1891 as a steel manufacturer and operator of hard coal mines in Hamborn-Bruckhausen, now part of Duisburg.
ThyssenKrupp ran into financial difficulties in 2010. Eight billion euros were invested in building a plant in Brazil by 2013. It was actually supposed to cost only a quarter of that and produce steel at 55 euros per slab – a unit of measurement for crude steel. In reality, however, production costs are 170 euros per slab above the world market price. Until 2015, production could not even be fully utilized due to technical problems.
The Brazilian project resulted in billions in write-offs and -Losses at ThyssenKrupp. In order to refinance these, several departments were sold or separated from the group. ThyssenKrupp made the biggest profit with its elevator division. In 2020, shortly before the outbreak of the Corona crisis, it was sold for 17.2 billion to a consortium of the US investment firm Advent International, its British counterpart Cinven and the German RAG Foundation.
2. Hoechst (1998) – 39 billion euros
For a long time, Hoechst was one of the largest chemical and pharmaceutical companies in Germany. It was founded in 1863 in Höchst am Main near Frankfurt, which was not yet part of Germany at the time. Like many companies of the time, such as Bayer and BASF it started out as a manufacturer of paints. Hoechst is considered a pioneer, especially in social matters. In 1874 the first company health insurance fund was founded, followed in 1879 by a pension fund for workers, which also granted loans for building houses. In 1883 the production of medicines began. By the time of the First World War, Hoechst had grown into a global corporation. The two world wars led to a merger of Bayer, BASF and Hoechst, which was not dissolved until 1953. By 1990 Hoechst had increased its annual sales to the equivalent of around 24 billion euros, but remained in the shadow of its competitors Bayer and BASF. In the 1990s sales remained stable, but profits dwindled ever more rapidly, making Hoechst a takeover candidate. From 1995 onwards a new board of directors responded with numerous restructuring measures. Divisions were sold and other companies acquired. The aim was to transform a chemical and pharmaceutical group into a life sciences company.
This resulted in a merger with the French competitor Rhône-Poulenc in 1998. We count this as a sale of Hoechst because the merger was technically carried out through a public takeover offer by Rhône-Poulenc for the equivalent of around 39 billion euros. However, the Hoechst shareholders were paid in shares of the French company, so they ultimately gained nothing. The group that emerged from the merger was renamed Aventis and was immediately the second largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in the world. This in turn merged with Sanofi to Sanofi-Aventis. After that, all parts of the company that were previously assigned to Hoechst were gradually sold or closed.
1. Mannesmann (1999) – 190 billion euros
Germany still holds the record for the most expensive takeover in history. Never has a company paid more for another than the British giant Vodafone 1999 for its German competitor Mannesmann.
Mannesmann was actually founded in 1885 as a manufacturer of steel pipes in Remscheid, North Rhine-Westphalia. It was so successful that “Mannesmann pipe” soon became synonymous with seamless steel pipes. Siemens used it to build the world’s first oil pipeline in Russia at the end of the 19th century. It later became a steel giant, but after the Second World War Mannesmann also continued to experiment with new business areas.
One of them brought the big breakthrough: in 1990, Mannesmann acquired the license to build Germany’s first mobile phone network – and to operate it. With the triumph of mobile phones and the Internet, this became a gold mine that soon brought in more profits than all other company divisions. The telecom division was therefore spun off from the group in 1999. In the same year, Mannesmann bought up its British competitor Orange. At the equivalent of 29.6 billion euros, this remains one of the most expensive takeovers by a German group to date. Vodafone saw its British home market threatened by the acquisition of Mannesmann and therefore began a hostile takeover of the German competitor. The Mannesmann supervisory board rejected an initial offer of 100 billion euros, but then gave in at 190 billion euros. Because the management and supervisory board members received high severance payments, several lawsuits were initiated in the following years, but later dropped in return for high payments.
Vodafone broke up the Mannesmann Group after the purchase. Competitor Orange had to be sold to France Telecom for antitrust reasons. Everything that was not related to telecommunications was also sold. Vodafone refinanced around 70 billion euros in this way. Siemens and Bosch secured the plant construction, so that at least this remained in Germany. The tube works went to the Salzgitter AG, the automotive division to the German supplier ZF Friedrichshafen. Vodafone only kept the telecommunications business, which was integrated into the parent company. To this day, the British company operates one of the largest mobile phone networks in Germany.
