Werner Marnette

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Werner Marnette at an event on May 1, 2007

Werner Marnette (born September 27, 1945 in Cologne ) is a German manager and politician ( CDU ).

From 1994 to 2007 he was Chairman of the Board of Directors of Norddeutsche Affinerie AG and from July 2008 to March 2009 Minister for Science, Economics and Transport of the State of Schleswig-Holstein .

Life and work

Marnette grew up in Cologne as the son of a locksmith worker. In 1968 he began studying metallurgy and electrometallurgy at RWTH Aachen University , which he completed in 1973 with a diploma . He then worked as a scientific assistant at RWTH Aachen University, where he was awarded a Dr.-Ing. Degree in 1977 with the work on ore reduction in thermal gas plasma using an induction plasma unit and a plasma unit with fluidized bed electrode. PhD. In 1978 he started working as an assistant at Norddeutsche Affinerie AG; In 1979 he switched to Korf Stahl AG as a research engineer for electrical steel . In 1980 Marnette returned to Norddeutsche Affinerie as assistant to the board. In 1986 he became operations director there and was promoted to the company's board of directors in 1990. From 1994 until his resignation on November 9, 2007, he was ultimately CEO. It was during this period that Norddeutsche Affinerie went public ( MDAX ) in 1998 and became the largest copper producer in Europe.

The background to his resignation was the dispute with the supervisory board and within the executive board about how to deal with the major shareholder Mirko Kovats . Marnette took a line of approaching each other. In the course of this, Kovats was to receive two of the six supervisory board mandates of the capital side on the supervisory board of the Norddeutsche Affinerie. Before that, Marnette had already given two further mandates to representatives from the board of Cumerio SA, Brussels, which Norddeutsche Affinerie is trying to take over. Overall, this led to considerable differences with the Supervisory Board. Ultimately, on November 9, 2007, with the support of the Supervisory Board and against the will of Marnette, the management board was able to implement a capital increase of 10%. It should serve to broaden the financial basis for the takeover of Cumerio. At the same time, however, the capital increase diluted the stake held by the major shareholder Kovats. In the media this was seen as a declaration of war against Kovats and as against Marnette's declared stance. As a result of his weakened position within the management board and towards the supervisory board, the contract was terminated “by mutual agreement”. Marnettes' attempt to be elected to the company's supervisory board at the general meeting of Norddeutsche Affinerie AG on February 29, 2008, failed with only 6% approval. In 2009 the affinerie was renamed Aurubis .

Werner Marnette is married and has two children.

Association activity

From 1996 to 2003 Marnette was president of the European umbrella organization of the metal industry "Eurometeaux" and from 1998 to 2002 president of the metal industry association. He was also a member of the Presidium of the Federation of German Industries from 1998 to 2005 , where he headed the Energy Committee from 2001 to 2005. From 2002 to 2007, Marnette was also Vice President of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce .

Criticism of the electricity oligopoly

Marnette became known to a broad public through his criticism of the oligopoly (see report of the independent monopoly commission of July 9, 2004) of the four electricity producers E.ON, RWE, EnBW, Vattenfall and their electricity prices for German industry . Among other things, he casually claimed that the four large electricity companies had divided Germany into four “zones of occupation”. The electricity companies then obtained a court order prohibiting Marnette from repeating this statement.

Marnette calls for the capacity of the interconnection points to be expanded and for grid usage fees to be reduced for the non-discriminatory import of electricity to Germany. He calls for the introduction of the same trading criteria for the Leipzig electricity exchange EEX as they are valid on the Scandinavian electricity exchange Nordpool , in particular the information of all market participants about the daily capacities of the power plants and overland networks . Marnette fears that the high price policy of the four groups will lead to the exodus of energy-intensive companies from Germany and thus to the destruction of a total of 660,000 jobs in the German basic industry.

In this context, after massive interventions by the four market-dominating power companies, Marnette resigned from his position as chairman of the energy committee of the Federation of German Industries in August 2005. To this he said: I will stick to my criticism. I'm resigning because I don't want to put the BDI through an acid test. Since then, he has remained the sharpest critic of the Stromoligopoly and has presented his request to EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes .

Public offices

Werner Marnette joined the state government of Schleswig-Holstein led by Prime Minister Peter Harry Carstensen (CDU) on July 9, 2008 as Minister for Science, Economics and Transport, succeeding Dietrich Austermann . On March 29, 2009, he resigned from this office. The reason he cited was his dissatisfaction with the way the state government had dealt with HSH Nordbank's difficulties in connection with the international financial crisis . His criticism in this regard was not taken into account in the government.

Others

In 2007 he wanted to build NA's own power plant in Hamburg and burn rubbish to produce electricity there together with the Hamburg city cleaning service.

Honors

Marnette has been the recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class and the Georg Agricola commemorative coin, the highest award of the GDMB Society for Mining, Metallurgy, Raw Material and Environmental Technology eV , since 2005

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Ulrike Meyer-Timpe: David against the electricity giants. In: Zeit Online . 2007, accessed November 6, 2014 .
  2. Kiel IHK boss Biel replaces Economics Minister Marnette. In: NDR online . March 30, 2009, archived from the original on April 1, 2009 ; accessed on November 6, 2014 .
  3. Landesbanken: "This is a delusional system". In: Spiegel Online . April 6, 2009, accessed November 6, 2014 .
  4. Thomas Steinmann: "Bankster in the Landesbanken". Marnette's angry speech. In: Financial Times Germany . June 27, 2009, archived from the original on June 27, 2009 ; accessed on November 6, 2014 .