iNSiGht - Intro

Börse getting nowhere
Billions rain on Telekom
companies
Deutsche bank wants to hive off
asset management
In late November 2011 Germany’s largest private bank, the Deutsche
Bank, indicated it wanted to restructure its in-house asset management.
Financial Times Deutschland, referring to financial sources, now sees
the second round of the process ushered in: interested parties are now
looking at the books. It states there are prior non-binding offers from a
dozen companies for the divisions, which manage total assets worth 360
billion euros. In addition to asset management, the business with large
institutional clients and the mutual-fund subsidiary in the United States
are also up for grabs. By the end of February binding offers should be
submitted. In addition to U.S. fund companies such as Pimco, financial
investors are regarded as potential buyers. The target is revenue of two
to three billion euros.
The Deutsche Börse management has offered to the Works Council to
hold talks on a job-security agreement for the Hessian offices in Frankfurt
and Eschborn, under the mediation of the State Chancellery in
Wiesbaden. The exchange operator wants to make no compulsory redundancies
for the 1,600 employees for two years, and at the same time
undertake to invest a volume of at least 300 million euros over a period
of three years. The council has rejected this offer, however, and currently
sees no need for action. It wants first to wait and see whether the merger
of the two exchanges will ever happen. The EU Competition Commission
says it wants to decide on the merger project on 1 February, with 25
of the 27 commissioners here standing behind Joaquín Almunia, who
assessed the proposed merger as well as the Hessian Securities and Exchange
Commission critically.
Deutsche Telekom got the three billion dollar compensation for the failure
of the sale of T-Mobile USA remitted from AT&T at the end of 2011.
In addition, the DAX group is to receive as further compensation access
to the network of the U.S. telephone company in regions where T-Mobile
had not been present, thus saving substantial investments. Just before
Christmas, the takeover of the U.S. wireless business by AT&T for $39
billion finally failed at the resistance of American regulatory authorities.
On the balance-sheet the positive special effect is countered by restructuring
costs and write-downs on the U.S. mobile subsidiary, which had
been postponed by the merger agreement in March last year.
issue 02/2012
05
03