61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

Nestlé’s own corporate culture. There is no doubt that he influenced the
expansion policy that Nestlé pursued without respite at the time, even at the
cost of a number of short-term sacrifices.
The same cannot be said of all his colleagues who ran Swiss subsidiaries in
Germany. The senior management of Brown Boveri in Mannheim did not fail
to inform its head office in Baden; however, it pursued its own expansion policy
contrary to the opinion of the parent company’s Board of Directors which felt
more vulnerable and was concerned about long-term unproductive investment.
A firm which manufactures capital goods cannot be run like one which produces
consumer goods. This example shows that even if the parent company was
informed, it did not always manage to keep control of its subsidiary. Paulssen,
head of the Aluminium-Werk in Singen and of the ALIG, not only passed little
information on to his head office but also acted in accordance with his own
particular brand of corporate politics which was based on the principles of
German-nationalist conservatism adhered to by the older generation and which
was thus alien both to National Socialism and to the liberalism prevailing
among the larger Swiss businesses. It should also be pointed out that it was even
more difficult to keep a check on subsidiaries in the UK and overseas. Sulzer,
for example, lost all contact with its British company. The only exceptions were
those firms which had two head offices (in the USA and in Switzerland), i.e.,
Nestlé and Hoffmann-La Roche.
After September 1939, two subsidiaries operating in Poland were within the
German economic and political sphere of influence. One had been founded
jointly with a local firm by Ciba as early as 1899 in the suburbs of Lodz. This
was the Pabianicer Chemical Industry Ltd. (Pabianicer Aktiengesellschaft für
Chemische Industrie, PCI), which manufactured dyes (21% of total Polish
production in 1938) as well as medicines. The managing director, Hermann
Thommen, was Swiss. The other was a small Hoffmann-La Roche subsidiary in
Warsaw, which represented only 1% of Roche’s worldwide turnover. This firm
managed to keep up its production of Roche specialities until the Warsaw
uprising (August/September 1944). It was run from Basel by the vice-director,
Dr. Louis Delachaux, who travelled as often as possible to Warsaw, plus skilled
and reputable Polish senior managers on the spot. Despite extremely difficult
circumstances and pressure from the occupying powers as well as the German
directors of Ciba and Roche, the two companies managed to maintain their
independence vis-à-vis Berlin and to keep in close touch with their head offices
in Basel. Both Thommen and Delachaux kept an eye open and reacted to the
situation with loyalty and a rare perspicacity. They displayed firmness and
undoubtedly courage. Delachaux, who experienced the fighting in September
1939 first-hand, summed up Poland’s future a few months later in three
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