Hugo Stinnes GmbH

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The Hugo Stinnes GmbH was one of Hugo Stinnes based German trading company based in Mülheim an der Ruhr . The company is not to be confused with the logistics group Stinnes AG , which still exists today and which only refers to the same namesake.

Company history

Hugo Stinnes GmbH was founded as a sole proprietorship in 1892 and converted into a GmbH in 1903 . Hugo Stinnes started his own business in the coal trade - supported by his mother . The company quickly developed into a globally branched trading and shipping group and, alongside the German-Luxemburgish Mining and Hütten-AG and RWE, formed the core of Stinnes' business activities. 60 companies were controlled by Hugo Stinnes GmbH. Important German branches were in Strasbourg , Mannheim , Berlin and Harburg , the main foreign bases were in Great Britain , Denmark , Sweden , Russia , Italy , Switzerland and the USA . In addition to the traditional fields of Stinnes' activities, such as inland shipping and coal trade, he was involved in mining , steel and rolling mills , the timber industry, the chemical industry, breweries , printing and publishing and the film industry, hotels and of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . He controlled banks and insurance companies. Ultimately, 1,535 companies with 2,888 operations belonged to the Stinnes Group.

After the death of Stinnes in 1924, the company quickly got into trouble and was insolvent in 1925. The Stinnes family was forced to raise American capital, which in 1926 forced them to pool all their assets in the Hugo Stinnes Corporation in Baltimore and to continue the remaining activities in it.

In 1942 the American branch was confiscated as enemy assets, and the company was henceforth limited to Germany. The Hugo Stinnes Corporation was auctioned off and continued as Hugo Stinnes Industrie Inc. in New York until it merged again with Hugo Stinnes GmbH in 1954 and from 1957 onwards through the acquisition of a banking consortium with a 75% stake by the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau mainly in Germany Property returned.

Hugo Stinnes Jr. however remained excluded from the management of American society due to American requirements. He had restarted the German branch of the group under the oldest company name Hugo Stinnes OHG after the Second World War and in 1952 left the management of the company run by his mother Cläre Stinnes-Wagenknecht and his siblings after a family dispute over the repurchase of an extensive property, the house of Rott. His intention to invest the necessary capital for this purchase in the construction of ships for his shipping line was also rejected by his brother Ernst, who was employed by Brenntag . From then on, Hugo Stinnes jr. advancing his trading and shipping interests in Hugo Stinnes Industrie und Handel GmbH and Hugo Stinnes Transozean Schiffahrt GmbH in Mülheim an der Ruhr as the Hugo Stinnes Personal Group . Hugo Stinnes jr. also the traditional business activities again and got involved in the coal-iron business, a lively post-war trade between the USA and Europe, in which Stinnes delivered steel and steel products, especially from Germany to the USA in exchange for American imported coal. In this context, the United States retroactively imposed customs obligations that brought Stinnes into liquidity difficulties in 1963 . He only overcame this by transferring valuable, industrial activities to the Flick Group, originally intended as a temporary transfer .

1965, today acquired E.ON belonging VEBA the trading company Hugo Stinnes oHG and annexed it in 1992 in full in the consolidated one. New financial difficulties after the death of Hugo Stinnes jr. caused the bankruptcy of the Hugo-Stinnes-Personal group in 1971 .

In 1994, VEBA owned Stinnes AG took over the Schenker-Rhenus Group from Deutsche Bahn . In 1999, the VEBA separated after several reorganizations of parts of its transport and logistics, issued by a public offering of Stinnes AG . Since 2003, Stinnes AG, which is the successor company of Hugo Stinnes' trading company, has belonged to the Deutsche Bahn group since 2003.

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