FRANKFURT: German heavy industry and steel giant, ThyssenKrupp’s supervisory board has agreed to take a 50-percent pay cut in view of disastrous losses last year, its chief said on Friday.
The supervisory board’s 20 members have agreed “to forego half their pay for 2012,” board chief Gerhard Cromme told ThyssenKrupp shareholders at their annual general meeting in Bochum, northwest Germany.
“This gesture is intended as a sign of our dismay and our solidarity with you, our shareholders,” he said. The move is related to huge losses the company incurred at new steel mills in Brazil and the United States. ThyssenKrupp has been forced to write down the value of those plants, running up an overall year-end loss of ¤4.7bn ($6.3bn) for the business year ended September 30.
Given the magnitude of that loss, the group announced it would not pay a dividend for the first time since the merger of Thyssen and Krupp nearly 14 years ago. The steel mills have since been put up for sale, but negotiations are still ongoing.
The annual meeting was an uncharacteristically stormy one, not only with shareholders calling for Cromme to step down in the wake of the debacle concerning the steel mills, but also anger at a recent string of scandals at the company. AFP
