Thorsten Grenz

Thorsten Grenz (born July 28, 1958 in Kiel ) is a German manager .

Life

Grenz 'father was a police officer.

Grenz studied business administration at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and specialized in accounting and finance. He received his doctorate there in 1986 with a dissertation on the dimensions and types of corporate crises: Analysis options on the basis of information from the annual financial statements as a business economist .

After completing his studies, he joined McKinsey management consultancy in 1986 . There he became Senior Project Leader and worked in Frankfurt , Paris and Vienna . His main task was strategy / organization for banks. Grenz left the company in 1992 and became an employee of Hapag-Lloyd . At Hapag-Lloyd, where he was initially Head of Corporate Controlling and then Managing Director Finance, he was in charge of mergers and acquisitions projects. In 1997 he became managing director of Hapag-Lloyd Container Linie GmbH .

In April 2000 Grenz moved to the German telecommunications company Mobilcom and became CFO. In June 2002 he replaced the Mobilcom founder and previous chairman of the board, Gerhard Schmid . In July 2005, with effect from September 1, 2005, Grenz was replaced as CEO of Mobilcom by the previous CEO of Freenet AG , Eckhard Spoerr . Spoerr then ran both companies while Grenz left Mobilcom.

On March 1, 2006, Grenz became Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Swiss Hero Group , a food manufacturer. The CEO of Hero, Stefan F. Heidenreich, knows Grenz from his student days, when Grenz was a doctoral candidate and Heidenreich was a student. On August 31, 2006, Grenz left the Hero group again without giving any reasons.

In March 2007 Grenz became an Operating Partner at 3i , a private equity company. His main focus was on buyouts .

The general meeting of Drägerwerk AG & Co. KGaA on May 9, 2008 appoints Grenz to the company's supervisory board.

From October 2008 to September 2012 Grenz was CEO of Veolia Umweltservice GmbH , which belongs to the French company Veolia Environnement .

Grenz has been a lecturer at Kiel University for a long time. In September 2012 he was made an honorary professor. Since January 2015 he has been President of the Financial Experts Association , an advocacy group for independent financial experts in supervisory bodies. In 2017, Envion AG advertised as part of its Initial Coin Offering by appointing Grenz as a consultant. In 2018, Envion AG went bankrupt.

Work at Mobilcom

On February 2, 2000, the German telecommunications company Mobilcom announced in an ad hoc announcement that the company's CFO, Carsten Meyer, would leave the company's management board on April 6, 2000 after the MobilCom AG general meeting and join the group's supervisory board will switch. Thorsten Grenz will be his successor as CFO. Shortly before Grenz became an employee of Mobilcom, France Télécom had bought a 28.5% stake in Mobilcom. The boss of Mobilcom wanted to acquire one of the UMTS licenses up for auction at almost any price . When the spectacular auction process ended after 173 rounds on August 17, 2000, Mobilcom paid 16.37 billion German marks , the equivalent of around 8.4 billion euros. For this, Mobilcom had to take out loans amounting to 4.6 billion marks. While Grenz stated in December 2000 that the financing of the UMTS licenses would be guaranteed even after the loan fell due in 2002, Mobilcom quickly ran into serious financial difficulties. Company founder Gerhard Schmid , who is also CEO of Mobilcom, accuses France Télécom of not investing enough in the expansion of the UMTS network. The financing requirement is around 11 billion euros.

The dispute between Schmid and France Télécom escalates, while at the same time Mobilcom's financial difficulties grow enormously. The Millenium GmbH , a company belongs to the wife of Schmid, 5% of the shares had "taken over" by Mobilcom, but not paid for itself. France Télécom and later also Mobilcom Schmid accused that Mobilcom had initially paid the Millenium GmbH money, with which Millenium had in turn acquired the shares. On June 21, 2002, the Mobilcom founder and previous chairman of the board, Gerhard Schmid, was dismissed by the supervisory board. Thorsten Grenz is appointed as his successor.

Immediately after taking office, Grenz initiated the end of Mobilcom's UMTS project. In the period that followed, Mobilcom tried at all costs to part with the UMTS license, which should be acquired beforehand at all costs, since the license obliges the licensee to set up his own UMTS infrastructure. There is no money for this, the market prospects for UMTS had deteriorated. The company offers the license worldwide at the symbolic price of one euro. However, there is no buyer. On December 23, 2003, Mobilcom published a brief press release stating, “The Management Board and Supervisory Board of mobilcom AG […] have decided to return the licenses for the operation of a UMTS network […] to the regulatory authority for post and telecommunications. "

Grenz also immediately initiated massive downsizing and cost savings at Mobilcom. In August, the company terminated the contracts with a total of 300 external consultants for the expansion of the UMTS network, the total costs of which amount to 40 million euros per month, compared to 60 million euros per month for the more than 5000 permanent employees, of which however in the in the following months about 1800. France Télécom itself is in considerable financial difficulties and despite the influence of the Federal Chancellery at Grenz's request , the Board of Directors of France Télécom decides on September 12, 2002 to completely end the cooperation with Mobilcom. The exit of France Télécom causes a rapid loss in value of the already almost worthless Mobilcom shares and on September 13th the securities lose 46% of their value and are quoted at 0.97 euros at the close of the stock exchange. After months of trembling, France Télécom agrees with reservations at the end of November 2002 to the rescue plan for MobilCom developed by the head of the border and supervisory board, Dieter Vogel. This largely excludes MobilCom and lays the foundation for a new beginning. France Télécom takes on 7 billion euros in debt and makes 580 million euros available for freezing UMTS activities.

At the end of 2002 there were initial tensions between Grenz and the Mobilcom supervisory board after Grenz publicly announced that it would sell the 76 percent share that Mobilcom holds in freenet . Grenz has to give up his project. A spokesman for Mobilcom told the press that it was possible to integrate Mobilcom's landline activities into freenet , and that a preliminary contract had already been signed for this. In the following years Grenz reorganized the company and led it back into profitability in 2003. Before leaving the company, he presented an impressive balance sheet for the first half of 2005: Compared to the same period in the previous year, mobilcom reported earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of EUR 80.7 million, an increase of 47 percent. The bottom line was a profit of 53.6 million euros (plus 64 percent). Sales rose by a total of 2.8 percent to 960.2 million euros. The price of the mobilcom share had meanwhile increased twentyfold to over 20 euros.

The merger initiated by Grenz with the subsidiary freenet, against which freenet boss Spoerr had long blocked, is no longer in charge of Grenz himself: In July 2005, with effect from September 1, 2005, he will be appointed chairman of the board of Mobilcom by the previous one CEO of Freenet AG, Eckhard Spoerr, replaced. Spoerr is to lead both companies in the future. Grenz, whose contract was supposed to run until March 31, 2008, is leaving the company. In return for the early termination of the contract, he receives two million euros, plus 330,000 euros for the agreement of a post-contractual non-competition clause from September 1, 2005 to June 30, 2006 and 120,000 euros for consulting services in the same period. He will also have the opportunity to exercise his 30,000 stock options until the original end of his contract. On September 15th, he will give a lecture entitled Between Shareholder Interests, Employee Demands and the Desires of Politicians. The German stock corporation in the field of tension between different expectations .

In the documentation Hedge Funds and Private Equity - A critical analysis by the Party of European Socialists , the authors take the view that Grenz left voluntarily because he did not agree to TPG's plan to distribute several hundred million euros in dividends .

"TPG was firmly resolved to pay out several hundred million euros to shareholders in the form of special dividends. The dividends have yet to be paid, perhaps because TPG is marking time in the face of the wide publicity given to its aggressive recapitalization plans. Thorsten Grenz, chief executive of Mobilcom, wanted nothing to do with this windfall and resigned his post. "

Private

Thorsten Grenz is married and has a daughter.

In his spare time he runs marathons , does the martial arts GTS Shoot Fighting and sails .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Thorsten Grenz - climber or emergency nail? Manager Magazin, June 24, 2002, viewed November 12, 2008
2. ↑ Thorsten Grenz: Dimensions and types of the corporate crisis: analysis options on the basis of year-end information . In: Verlagsgruppe Peter Lang (ed.): European university publications - economics and business administration . tape 784 , 1987, ISBN 3-8204-0160-1 , pp. 284 .
3. ↑ Thorsten Grenz replaces Jürgen Rauen as head of Veolia Umweltservice Website of the Federal Association of Secondary Raw Materials and Disposal eV, October 8, 2008
4. ^ "Real Heavyweight" Focus-Money, 14/2005
5. ↑ Preview: Presentation in the Marketing Club Lübeck  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Marketing-Club Lübeck, September 2nd, 2005, sighted November 13th, 2008  
6. ↑ the shadow of the patriarch  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. VDI-nachrichten, June 28, 2002, viewed November 13, 2008  
7. ^ "There was no alternative" Focus, October 30, 2003
8. ↑ ^{a b} MobilCom supervisory board dismissed Schmid teltarif.de, June 21, 2002
9. ↑ ^{a b} Freenet boss Spoerr is also Mobilcom CEO
10. ↑ ^{a b} Mobilcom boss apparently goes into dispute Handelsblatt, July 10, 2005
11. ↑ Hero appoints Dr. Thorsten Grenz as new Group CFO ( Memento from May 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Hero, January 27, 2006
12. ↑ Ex-Mobilcom boss goes to Hero Handelsblatt, January 26, 2006
13. ↑ September 2006.html CONTROLLER'S E-NEWS International Controller Association in Germany, September 1, 2006
14. ↑ Ex-Mobilcom boss Grenz moves on PC-Welt, August 29, 2006
15. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Handelsblatt dated August 29, 2006, cited above. in GENIOS, press from AZ
16. ↑ Two senior hires for 3i Buyouts business ( Memento of 21 November 2008 at the Internet Archive ) 3i Press Release March 12, 2007
17. ↑ 3i obliges Thorsten Grenz , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 13, 2007
18. ↑ Annual report Drägerwerk 2nd quarter 2008  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (pdf; 273 kB), viewed November 13, 2008  
19. ↑ Ex-Mobilcom boss Grenz becomes top manager at environmental company Veolia greenpeace magazine, October 8, 2008
20. ↑ Personnel reports September 2012 Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel , October 2, 2012
21. ↑ Thorsten Grenz is the new President of Financial Experts . FEA. January 20, 2015. Archived from the original on April 7, 2015. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 3, 2015. 
22. ^ Sönke Iwersen, Andrew Bulkeley: Envion: The chronology of a cryptocurrency catastrophe . In: Handelsblatt from September 6, 2018.
23. ^ Nathaniel Popper: In the World of Cryptocurrency, Even Good Projects Can Go Bad . In: New York Times, May 31, 2018.
24. ↑ ots Ad hoc service: MobilCom AG MobilCom AG / 02/10/2000: Annual result significantly increased - Mobilcom ad hoc announcement from February 10, 2000 Kreissparkasse Waiblingen: Stock market information, viewed on November 13, 2008
25. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: MobilCom offers (almost) any price for UMTS tecchannel.de, April 20, 2000, viewed November 13, 2008
26. ↑ Done: six UMTS licenses awarded heise online, August 17, 2000, viewed November 13, 2008
27. ↑ Mobilcom spokesman: Financing secured FinanzNachrichten, December 7, 2000, viewed November 13, 2008
28. ↑ MobilCom stops investments in network construction ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. tecchannel.de, July 10, 2002, viewed November 13, 2008 
29. ↑ MobilCom is suing company founder  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. stern.de, August 28, 2002, accessed July 19, 2009  
30. ^ Gerhard Schmid: End of a dazzling career call-magazin.de, June 24, 2002
31. ↑ MobilCom future after Schmid's departure unclear heise mobil, June 22, 2002, sighted November 13, 2008
32. ↑ ^{a b} The chair is already shaking from Grenz Manager-Magazin, December 9, 2002, sighted November 13, 2008
33. ↑ MobilCom's plans for next generation phones stalled.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. AllBusiness, July 9, 2002, viewed November 13, 2008  
34. ↑ Mobilcom before new start world, March 9, 2003, viewed November 13, 2008
35. ↑ mobilcom returns UMTS license (PDF; 375 kB) Mobilcom press release on openPR, viewed November 13, 2008
36. ↑ Mobilcom dismisses 300 UMTS consultants tariftip, August 16, 2002, viewed November 13, 2008
37. ↑ Fewer layoffs at Mobilcom than planned Handelsblatt, November 19, 2002, viewed November 13, 2008
38. ^ Au revoir MobilCom Spiegel online, September 12, 2002, viewed November 14, 2008
39. ↑ MobilCom is seen at Penny-Stock Spiegel online, September 13, 2002, November 14, 2008
40. ↑ France Télécom agrees restructuring plan to spiegel.de, November 22, 2002
41. ↑ Verivox : Handelsblatt: MobilCom supervisory board stops selling freenet Verivox, December 9, 2002, sighted November 13, 2008
42. ↑ Mobilcom is back on the road to success - Economy - Hamburger Abendblatt
43. ↑ mobilcom and freenet strengthen earning power before merging | 08/08/2005
44. ↑ Farewell for 2.45 million euros Manager-Magazin, July 15, 2005, viewed November 13, 2008
45. ↑ Preview: Presentation in the Marketing Club Lübeck  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Marketing-Club Lübeck, September 2nd, 2005, viewed 14-11-2008  
46. ^ Ieke van den Burg, Poul Nyrup: Hedge Funds and Private Equity - A critical analysis . Ed .: Socialist group in the European Parliament. May 25, 2007, p. 218 ff . ( online [PDF]). Hedge Funds and Private Equity - A critical analysis ( Memento of the original dated July 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
47. ↑ Thorsten Grenz: Hard-working model maker ( Memento from July 31, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Financial Times, June 8, 2005

Web sources

• boocompany.com (PDF file; 912 kB)