Horst-Dieter Esch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Horst-Dieter Esch (born August 10, 1943 in Hanover ) is a German- American entrepreneur . From 1975 he established the third largest construction machinery manufacturer in the world IBH-Holding within a few years from a small start-up capital , which went bankrupt in 1983 . Esch was sentenced to several years imprisonment for his role in bankruptcy , after which he moved to the United States in 1988 and acquired and ran the Wilhelmina Models modeling agency .

Family and education

The son of a Hanoverian machine fitter attended high school in Ravensburg and was then goalkeeper of the field handball team of the Weingarten gymnastics club . He studied business administration at the University of Utah from 1964 to 1967 and financed his studies as an usher in drive- in theaters . His thesis for the Master of Business Administration dealt with the possibilities of establishing drive-in cinemas in Germany.

Horst-Dieter Esch was married to Ana-Gaby Esch, who comes from Yugoslavia , and has a daughter Natascha (* 1971) with her. The two have since separated. He lives in Los Cabos , Mexico.

Start of business career

Since he had met the company boss on his return flight to Germany, Esch started in 1967 as a sales assistant at the light machine manufacturer Duomat in Hennef , whose machines he successfully sold in the USA. The construction machinery dealer Blackwood-Hodge became aware of him and he became its sales manager for Europe in 1973. Through credit-financed stock speculation with shares of his employer, Esch achieved a price gain of one million DM .

Foundation and rise of the IBH Holding

In July 1975 he founded with his winning the IBH Holding , based in Mainz , for Esch since ailing medium-sized construction machinery manufacturer acquired and the company purchase with bank loans from Bankhaus Schröder, Münchmeyer, Hengst & Co. financed (SMH Bank). The first company was the Zettelmeyer machine factory , steeped in tradition, in August 1975 , which he was able to acquire from Rhineland-Palatinate with the help of a state guarantee of DM 8.5 million . Esch followed the strategy of these companies reorganize , synergy potential to raise and market share to strengthening the market power to purchase. As part of this strategy, Duomat followed in 1976 (which belonged to his former employer Benno Kaltenegger; Esch paid the purchase price of DM 700,000 himself), Maschinenfabriken Hamm AG (January 1978) and Hermann Lanz KG (1978), the British Hymac Ltd. (1978), at the beginning of 1979 three French companies followed. IBH also acquired Hanomag in February 1980 and thereby rose to become the third party in the world after Caterpillar and Komatsu with sales of DM 2.5 billion and 15,000 employees.

In October 1979 Esch came into contact with Ferdinand-Josef Graf von Galen , the co-owner of the SMH-Bank with 40 percent of the shares. This acted as the house bank and from then on financed the acquisitions of the IBH Holding. The SMH Bank had an 83.33 percent stake in the concrete pump and asphalt machine manufacturer Wibau Maschinenfabrik Hartmann AG , which it sold to IBH in April 1980; In return, SMH was given a 7.4 percent stake in IBH. Esch was highly praised in many German and English-language media; In 1980 Die Zeit celebrated him as a “boy wonder”. In addition to Esch, the British Powell Duffryn (1978; 23.1 percent), General Motors (January 1981; in a share swap for the Terex acquired from IBH ; 13.6 percent), Deutsche Babcock AG (July 1982; 10th , 1 percent) and the Saudi Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel , so that Esch only held 9 percent of the company in 1982.

Bankruptcy of IBH-Holding and imprisonment

The global crisis in the construction industry also hit Esch's IBH Group. Wibau first had to file for bankruptcy in November 1983 because of the improved balance sheets . The IBH loan volume at the SMH-Bank totaled 898 million DM in November 1983. The SMH-Bank had to classify its loans to the IBH as at risk of default when its borrower IBH-Holding collapsed in November 1983. This credit volume reached eleven times the equity capital of the bank, which had bypassed the large exposure regulations because the IBH credits of the Luxembourg SMH subsidiary (DM 473 million) did not have to be included in large exposures due to a legal loophole. While Esch was sentenced in November 1984 by the Koblenz Regional Court to six and a half years in prison and a DM 90,000 fine for fraud , breach of trust and bankruptcy and was released in July 1989 after four years in prison, von Galen received three years and nine months in prison. As a result, the SMH Bank also got into a crisis, 20 German banks jointly undertook a rescue operation in November 1983. Blackwood Hodge briefly lost a third of its value on the London Stock Exchange.

Relocation to the USA and advancement in the modeling business

Immediately after his release from prison, Esch moved with his family to the United States and received American citizenship in 1989 after the family immigrated on an investor visa . Esch unsuccessfully negotiated a participation with the sports agency IMG , but then acquired the New York model agency Wilhelmina International for five million US dollars . He took the money from his private fortune, which he had been able to save after his trial. Under his leadership, the agency became the third largest company of its kind in the United States. In 1999 he sold 50 percent of the shares in the model agency to financial investor Brad Krassner. Wilhelmina is listed in NASDAQ under the symbol WHLM . With his modeling agency, Esch was also active in sports management and since 2008 head of the American handball association Team USA Handball , whose headquarters he moved to his home in Park City (Utah) and which he tried to professionalize and popularize - also through connections to Germany. After Esch had withdrawn from the management of Wilhelmina Models in 2003 (not without further securing influence with a 50 percent stake), he took over the operational business again in the course of a restructuring of the company after its IPO in 2009; from 2010 he was again Board Director of the company.

In the American fashion industry, the not very extravagant Esch was considered exotic, but surrounded itself with celebrities; so he counted Donald Trump among his friends during the first time in the USA. In the meantime (as of August 2018) Esch is only a simple member of the supervisory board and still holds a good 18 percent of Wilhelmina Models .

Real estate agent in Mexico

Esch has lived with his partner Vanessa Fukunaga in the luxury residential area of Los Cabos , in Baja California Sur , Mexico , since 2011 . The two have been trading in luxury real estate there since 2012.

literature

  • Horst-Dieter Esch , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 49/2003 from November 24, 2003, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
  • Michael Gross: Model Mogul. Who is Dieter Esch, and What Is He Up To? In: New York (magazine), June 14, 1993, pp. 34-42 (English, detailed cover story about Esch's rise in the United States).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Udo Lorenz: Horst-Dieter Esch. Economic miracle and bankruptcy: The IBH case. In: Stern , November 24, 2003.
  2. ↑ Horst-Dieter Esch , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 49/2003 of November 24, 2003, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of the article freely available).
  3. ↑ a b Olympic award. Handball needs Chicago. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 2, 2009.
  4. ↑ Michael Gross: Model Mogul. Who is Dieter Esch, and What Is He Up To? In: New York (journal), June 14, 1993, pp. 34–42, here p. 41 (English): Accordingly, the frequently mentioned assumption that Esch also studied at the University of California, Los Angeles , is wrong.
  5. ↑ a b c Nina Jauker: Ex-bankrupt Horst-Dieter Esch. Machines and girls. In: Die Süddeutsche , May 17, 2010.
  6. ↑ Contrary to what is often stated, Esch did not subsequently open the first drive-in cinema in Germany; see Michael Gross: Model Mogul. Who is Dieter Esch, and What Is He Up To? In: New York (magazine), June 14, 1993, pp. 34-42, here p. 42 (English).
  7. ^ Matthias Ruch: Horst-Dieter Esch. At construction, under construction, construction. ( Memento from August 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: Financial Times Deutschland , November 22, 2010.
  8. ↑ a b c d Roland Lindner. The new luxury life of Horst-Dieter Esch . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 28, 2018. p. 22
  9. ↑ Industrie-Anzeiger, Volume 97, issues 79-88, 1975, p. 17.
  10. ↑ In the past you would have shot yourself. In: Der Spiegel 3/1986 of January 13, 1986, p. 126 ff.
  11. ↑ Comparison rate could not be achieved. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 14, 1983.
  12. Jump up ↑ careers. In: Der Spiegel 48/1983 of November 28, 1983, p. 115 f.
  13. ↑ Peter Christ : Entrepreneurial career: Esch - the boy wonder. In: Die Zeit , April 11, 1980.
  14. ↑ Affairs: Simply added. In: Der Spiegel 14/1984 of April 2, 1984, p. 60.
  15. ↑ You have to have a feel for banking. In: Der Spiegel 46/1984 of November 14, 1983, p. 124 f.
  16. ↑ Formally correct. In: Der Spiegel No. 40/1989 of October 2, 1989, p. 145.
  17. ↑ Michael Gross: Model Mogul. Who is Dieter Esch, and What Is He Up To? In: New York (magazine), June 14, 1993, pp. 34-42, here p. 42 (English).
  18. ^ Roland Lindner: Comeback on the financial markets. Esch brings Wilhelmina Models to the stock exchange. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 5, 2008.
  19. ↑ Investor Relations. ( Memento from August 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: Wilhelmina International New York (English).
  20. ↑ a b Wilhelmina International Inc. Executive Profiles: Horst-Dieter Esch. In: Bloomberg Business , last updated on August 28, 2015.
  21. ^ Christian Spiller: Match of Chicago. Handball as an export product. In: Die Zeit , July 17, 2010.
  22. ↑ Marika Schaertl: Portrait: The Resurrection. In: Focus , November 7, 2005.
personal data
SURNAME Esch, Horst-Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover