Wilh. Werhahn KG

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Wilh. Werhahn KG

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legal form KG
Seat Neuss , GermanyGermanyGermany 
management Paolo Dell'Antonio (CEO), Kathrin Dahnke (CFO) (since May 2018)
Anton Werhahn (Chairman of the Board) (since May 2018)
Number of employees 10,161 (2018)
sales 3.537 billion euros (2018)
Branch Conglomerate
Website www.werhahn.de
As of July 11, 2019

The Wilh. Werhahn KG is a family-owned conglomerate based in Neuss , which goes back to Wilhelm Werhahn .

In the 2018 financial year, the group achieved sales of around 3.54 billion euros with a total of around 10,160 employees. Its business activities are divided into the areas of building materials ( Basalt AG , Rathscheck Schiefer ), consumer goods ( Zwilling Kitchen, Zwilling Beauty Group, Jaguar / Tondeo hairdressing equipment ) and financial services ( Bank11 , abcfinance ).

According to Manager-Magazin 2009, the Werhahn family was the seventh richest large family in Germany with an estimated total assets of 2.6 billion euros.

history

Today's group of companies was created around numerous oil and grain mills as well as an agricultural and timber trade, which were run in the 19th century by Peter Wilhelm Werhahn and then by his son Peter Werhahn .

After the death of Peter Werhahn, Wilhelm Werhahn continued the family business: under his leadership, the family business successfully navigated the hyperinflation of 1923 . Since the Werhahn family maintained a considerable part of their assets in extensive real estate holdings in Neuss, Cologne, Berlin and the Ruhr area, they - unlike other family businesses - lost none of their standing during the global economic crisis . The Wicküler-Küpper brewery , at that time still in Wuppertal , was acquired during Werhahn's time at the head of the family company and, under the direction of manager Henry Reichert , expanded from a moderately flourishing regional brewery to one of the most successful large-scale breweries. Wicküler also had a 25% stake in Münchener Löwenbräu . The Werhahns held such a large stake in the Berlin Schultheiss brewery and the Dortmund Union brewery that they were given a supervisory board mandate. Breweries need grain , with which the Neuss-based company traditionally trades as well as wood , from which barrels and restaurant furniture were traditionally made for breweries . At the same time, since time immemorial, breweries have had almost the same position as banks towards innkeepers (in return they register mortgages on inns) by not only supplying inns on credit, but not infrequently financing the innkeeper's entire furniture and vis-à-vis the house owner as Tenants appear, this almost crisis-proof sector of the food and luxury food industry came under Wilhelm Werhahn's sights. The Gaststätten- und Hotelbetriebsgesellschaft mbH was also one of the Wicküler subsidiaries.

The Werhahns are likely to have had similar interests with the property utilization of Meierei C. Bolle , which emerged from the traditional Bolle dairy in Berlin and later operated the Berlin food supermarket chain Bolle . It was primarily Wilhelm Werhahn who expanded the family business in the retail sector through the delicatessen chain Schade & Füllgrabe with 100 branches in the Rhine-Main area and the supermarket chain Georg Schätzlein in the Ruhr area. The Werhahns also operated large-scale stores in the Hamburg area. The retail empire was supplemented by the shop fitting company Hansa-Kontor Außenhandel GmbH , which at that time also dealt with the import of carpets. This business area was sold to the Swedish ITAB group on January 1st, 2008. The entrepreneurial family from Neuss was and is also involved in the Neusser Lagerhausgesellschaft and the Gesellschaft für Buchdruckerei AG in Neuss, which also owned shares in the Rheinische Post in Düsseldorf .

When a member of the Werhahn family “took part in the Nazis” during the Third Reich , he was paid out by the others during the dictatorship and was excluded from the family business from then on. When the Nazis in 1939 the financial department heads of the province of Hesse-Nassau , Franz-Josef Wuermeling dismissed, which Werhahns took him as a board member of the Linz Basalt AG . Before the end of the war, Wilhelm Werhahn began to negotiate with the American occupiers about rebuilding the Neuss Chamber of Commerce .

In the course of Aryanization , Hermann and Wilhelm Werhahn acquired the Rheinische Mühlenwerke in Duisburg from their brothers Wilhelm and Hugo Cohen in January 1936 , which today is only reminiscent of the former Werhahnmühle , which today houses the Explorado Children's Museum. In 1938 the Werhahns had an eleven-story silo built for the Rheinische Mühlenwerke Werhahn in Duisburg harbor , which was badly damaged in the Second World War . Today the Mühle Georg Plange KG with the Diamantmehl brand in Neuss and the Palatinate Mühlenwerke in Mannheim with the Goldpuder brand together with the companies Diamant Österreich, Dresdener Mühle , Langhorst Wassermühle , the Braunschweiger Mühle Rüningen and the Kyllburger (Eifel) Nikolaus Zahnen & Sohn GmbH and Co. Werhahn-Mühlen KG.

The Neuss-based family business had long had considerable interests in lignite mining and trading, as the mines had been one of the most important consumers of wood for decades. The Horremer briquette factory was for years as an operating department of the Wilh. Werhahn oHG . In addition, the Werhahns were still involved in the Wachtberg I Braunkohlenwerke GmbH and Clarenberg AG for the coal and clay industry in Frechen and operated an extensive coal trade through the Berlin FA Meier & Co. and the Cologne Schunck & Dreschmann KG . Wilhelm Werhahn strengthened the family company's position in the coal sector. But the East German collieries in Senftenberg , Tröbitz and Meurostollen were expropriated after the Second World War in favor of a state-owned company . With its widespread ownership of 177 mutation fields in the Rhenish lignite mining district at the beginning of the 1960s, Werhahn held the key to the success of the RWE subsidiary Rheinbraun . Logically, Wilhelm Werhahn also sat on the supervisory board of the parent company RWE in 1967 for the largest private shareholders with approx. 10% , which he led for many years. 1956 Werhahn sold the Elwerath union to the Eschweiler Mining Association . He was also committed to the electrification of the railways , which was probably beneficial to RWE's electricity sales. The ties between the Werhahn family and RWE can also be seen in the fact that Michael Werhahn, a member of the family on the supervisory board, is still protecting their interests and grandson Wilhelm Werhahn was on the board of Lausitzer Braunkohle AG and Lahmeyer AG in 1998 . For a long time, the company from Neuss also had large shares in another important coal customer: the Dortmund-based Hoesch AG , which supplied the mining industry with considerable quantities of steel products .

At the end of the 1950s Werhahn was president of the supervisory board of Heinrich Bergbau-AG in Essen-Kupferdreh , which at that time had four mines and in which the Werhahn family held around 15% of the share capital. All other shareholders were small shareholders. Heinrich Bergbau-AG had a share capital of 15 million DM, of which, at Werhahn's urgent recommendation, against the resistance of fellow shareholders, they invested 14 million DM in the modernization of their "Alter Hellweg" mine and the construction of a new one called "Heide" in Unna masses stuck. Since the mines had been working even more unprofitable than before since the extensive modernization, the unsuccessful attempt to sell them was made before the two pits were finally shut down in the summer of 1961. As Heinrich Bergbau-AG then made a considerable loss, 2,000 of the 6,000 miners once employed lost their jobs and the share price fell, whereupon many small shareholders sold their shares and Werhahn made his supervisory board chair available. However, the Wilh. Werhahn oHG together with Commerzbank gradually increased their share to more than 50% of the share capital by 1967 as prices fell. However, since Heinrich Bergbau-AG concentrated on the sale of anthracite domestic coal and the pressing of hard coal briquettes under its new chairman of the supervisory board, Wilhelm Werhahn's nephew Peter C. Werhahn , it was soon able to overcome its crisis and continue its course until 1967 despite the onset of the crisis of the Ruhr mining industry triple. Heinrich Bergbau-AG has since become Heinrich Industrie- und Handels-AG , in which the entrepreneurial family from Neuss has a stake of more than 51%. Under the Heinrich Industrie division , the Werhahn Group now operates the manufacturer of electronic components and fuses Wilhelm Pudenz GmbH in Dünsen , Efen GmbH in Eltville am Rhein and Wickmann-Werke GmbH in Witten .

The Cologne-based Strabag Bau-AG , which built the “Heide” mine and, with some subsidiaries , supplied some of the necessary material, benefited from the sole decision of the chairman of the supervisory board at Heinrich Bergbau-AG . The mining equipment was supplied by companies that belonged to the Grevenbroicher Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf AG . The Werhahn family played a major role in both groups for a long time. In 1974 she sold 75% of the Buckau R. Wolf AG machine factory to Krupp Industrietechnik Rheinhausen , which was followed by the remaining stake a year later. At the end of the East German building boom - in time for the crisis in the construction industry - Werhahn-Bank and Schunck & Dreschmann GmbH & Co. KG also parted with their stake in the internationally active Strabag AG in 1998. Strabag was an important customer of another Werhahn company, Basalt-AG, for its road construction , airport construction and railway construction projects , which for a long time functioned as the parent company of Strabag and twelve other companies and is now a market-dominant parent company for large parts of the asphalt mixing plants in Germany Takes position. In 2002 it became clear that the partnership between Strabag and Werhahn still works today: When the daughter of the insolvent Frankfurt-based Philipp Holzmann AG , Neu-Isenburger Deutsche Asphalt GmbH, was up for sale, both companies tried to take over it together.

The Handelsblatt once illuminated the dividend policy of the companies controlled by Werhahn: “The 8% dividends (1963) at Buckau means that the company did not pay out any of its own earnings to its shareholders. It only passed on its investment income. Strabag pursued a particularly extreme retention policy : the income-related taxes amounted to eleven times the reported profit! And at Wicküler this position was fourfold ... Accordingly, the recipe for investors will remain in the future: Only those who expect more wealth than dividends should participate in companies in which Werhahns are major shareholders. ” Among the legendary Characteristics of the Werhahn family, in particular Wilhelm Werhahn's personal traits, were extreme frugality, which, thanks to the countless anecdotes, can also be viewed as avarice, and extreme discretion. Although Wilhelm Werhahn was mentioned all his life in the same breath as the banker of Deutsche Bank Hermann Josef Abs and the private banker Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim , the companies controlled by Werhahn spent about eighty-five times what the extended family paid for the numerous obituaries on his death spent.

Company today

The Werhahn's traditional timber trade is no longer located at Neuss harbor, where it prevented the completion of an important inner-city road expansion for decades. The Werhahn family has lifted the traditional discretion a little, as the family business has now been converted into a limited partnership and is subject to the usual disclosure rules. The family adopted a modern social contract that did away with the tradition that each family tribe can send a member to the board.

In the meantime, Werhahn has withdrawn from most of its holdings in the coal and retail trade and lignite, just as it has disinvested in the banking sector and breweries. Essentially, the Solingen cutlery manufacturer Zwilling JA Henckels has been added . In addition, the family company operates Rathscheck Schiefer und Dach-Systeme ZN, which specializes in slate products, in addition to Basalt AG, another traditional company in the building materials sector. With the takeover of Preusse Bauholding in August 2005, whose building construction and civil engineering business was sold to Strabag in March 2006, the group expanded further in the area of ​​asphalt mixing plants. With the Potsdamer Märkische Bau Union (MBU), it is also still involved in the sector of turnkey residential and commercial buildings and building renovation. In 2014 Werhahn sold its milling business (Premium Mühlen Gruppe PMG) to Bindewald and Gutting.

The private bank Wilh was and is at the center of the family's wealth . Werhahn in Neusser Königsstraße, whose activities focus on family members and family businesses and has been called Bankhaus Werhahn GmbH (previously: Bankhaus Werhahn KG ) since January 1, 2011 .

As an independent credit institute of Wilh. Werhahn KG, abcbank specializes in the refinancing of receivables from the leasing and factoring business of abcfinance. In 2018 the total assets of abcfinance (including abcbank and Dresdner Factoring AG) were around 3 billion euros. Werhahn also owns a partial payment bank, Bank11 für Privatkunden und Handel GmbH . This will be taken over by C&A Money Bank on September 1, 2013. This direct bank operates as Bank11direkt , based in Neuss .

The family business has posted no net loss since World War II. Often only a third of the annual surplus was distributed and Wilhelm Werhahn's retention policy was largely continued. The turnover of the Holding Wilh. Werhahn KG shrank from 2.006 billion euros (2001) to 1.645 billion (2004) with a foreign share of 27% and an equity ratio of 76%. She announced expansion into Eastern Europe and Asia. In 2003, 7,520 people were employed in the approximately 130 companies of the conglomerate. In February 2001, Norbert Wiemers , who did not belong to the family, took over the chairmanship of the family company as a personally liable partner from the Darmstadt plexiglass manufacturer Röhm. But already in November 2005 he was replaced by a representative of the three Werhahn tribes in the fifth generation, Anton Werhahn , as spokesman for the board. Anton Werhahn is married to the daughter of the plaster billionaire Nikolaus Knauf . The grandson Wilhelm Werhahn, born in 1939, who was on the holding's board of directors alongside Michael Werhahn until January 31, 2003 , has meanwhile moved up from the deputy chairman of the IHK Mittlerer Niederrhein to its chairman.

In June 2017 Paolo Dell'Antonio , former board spokesman of Mast-Jägermeister SE, became a member of the board of Wilh. Werhahn KG elected. Since May 2018, he has been the company's first spokesman for the board of directors who does not come from the owner family. Anton Werhahn moved to the board of directors and took over its chairmanship.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Annual Report 2018 (Wilh. Werhahn KG)
  2. ↑ Annual Report 2018
  3. ^ Richest Germans: The Wealthiest Extended Families (Manager Magazin Online, October 6, 2009)
  4. ↑ a b Bernt Engelmann: Die Macht am Rhein, Volume 1: Der alte Reichtum, Munich, 1968; ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 178
  5. ↑ Michael Jungblut: The rich and the super rich, Hamburg, 1971, ISBN 3-499-16818-9 , p. 64f
  6. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: Meine Freunde die Millionär, Munich, 1963, p. 167.
  7. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: Die Macht am Rhein, Volume 1: Der alte Reichtum, Munich, 1968; ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 186
  8. ↑ Tradition obliges ( Memento of November 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ The inner harbor. Bread basket of the Ruhr area ( Memento of the original from October 17, 2011 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.innenhafen-portal.de
  10. ↑ http://www.unternehmerschaft.de/print.php?cid=2197  ( 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.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.unternehmerschaft.de  
  11. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from June 24, 2008 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.werhahn.de
  12. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: The power on the Rhine, Volume 1: The old wealth. Munich 1968, ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 181.
  13. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: The power on the Rhine, Volume 1: The old wealth. Munich 1968, ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 173.
  14. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: The power on the Rhine, Volume 1: The old wealth. Munich 1968, ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 187.
  15. ↑ Michael Jungblut: The rich and the super rich. Hamburg 1971, ISBN 3-499-16818-9 , p. 64.
  16. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: The power on the Rhine, Volume 1: The old wealth. Munich 1968, ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 181.
  17. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: How we became what we are. From unconditional surrender to unconditional rearmament. Munich 1980, p. 135 ff.
  18. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: The power on the Rhine, Volume 1: The old wealth. Munich 1968, ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 183.
  19. ↑ Tradition obliges ( Memento of November 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ↑ Wolfgang Clement becomes a member of the supervisory board. (Manager Magazin Online, February 13, 2006)
  21. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from October 17, 2006 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.commerzbank.com
  22. ↑ a b Bernt Engelmann: Die Macht am Rhein, Volume 1: Der alte Reichtum, Munich, 1968; ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 185
  23. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: The power on the Rhine, Volume 1: The old wealth. Munich 1968, ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 166 ff.
  24. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: The power on the Rhine, Volume 1: The old wealth. Munich 1968, ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 167 f.
  25. ↑ a b Bernt Engelmann: Die Macht am Rhein, Volume 1: Der alte Reichtum, Munich, 1968; ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 168
  26. ↑ http://www.bauingenieur24.de/fachbeitraege/unternehmen/1003.htm
  27. ↑ Handelsblatt series: Family ties: Quiet flute tones. In: Handelsblatt . November 8, 2005, accessed July 23, 2016 .
  28. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from September 27, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.werhahn.de
  29. ↑ http://www.wz.de/lokales/rhein-kreis-neuss/neuss/werhahn-verkauf-muehlen-1.1648924
  30. ^ Bankhaus Werhahn GmbH
  31. ↑ Background. abcfinance, accessed December 16, 2019 .
  32. ↑ Numbers, data, facts. abcfinance, accessed December 16, 2019 .
  33. ↑ Imprint of Bank11
  34. ↑ http://www.kredit-pfadfinder.de/bank11direkt/
  35. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from October 8, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.handelsblatt.com
  36. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from September 27, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.werhahn.de
  37. ↑ Werhahn Group wants to make acquisitions in Asia and Eastern Europe. (Welt Online, June 30, 2005)
  38. ↑ Neukirchen, H. Evers and Meier, J .: Family members hoped in vain. (Manager Magazin Online, November 23, 2000)
  39. ↑ Werres, Thomas: Change of boss at the conglomerate. (Manager Magazin Online, November 16, 2005)
  40. ↑ Scheele, Martin: The hunters of the white gold. (Manager Magazin Online September 28, 2004)
  41. ↑ http://www.wz.de/mobile/lokales/rhein-kreis-neuss/neuss/werhahn-kg-stell-fuehrungsspitze-neu-auf-1.2677178

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