The expensive naivety of the Germans

t online The expensive naivety of the Germans Article by Daniel Saurenz • Whether in politics or business - a friendly demeanor alone does not guarantee success, not even financial success on the stock market. You can hardly be friendlier in tone and more likeable in demeanor than Robert Habeck. That's why the Germans voted him their most popular politician less than three years ago. Not far away at the time was his party colleague Annalena Baerbock, who now not only has a long chain of mistakes in the Foreign Ministry, but is also not very squeamish about her goals and is by no means overcautious. Despite his friendly demeanor, Habeck also showed that he would go for green dogmas over economic corpses. This can be clearly seen from the fact that the purchasing managers' index for the manufacturing sector in Germany remains at a level of 40. Below 50 we speak of shrinkage, and in this area Germany has been in a deep recession for a year and a half. The stock professional Daniel Saurenz is a financial journalist, passionate stock marketer and founder of Feingold Research. He and his team have a total of more than 150 years of stock market experience and combine stock market psychology, technical analysis, product and market expertise. At t-online he writes about investments and the situation on the markets, always with a focus on the risk-reward ratio for investors. You can reach Daniel on his portal Crisis management needs to be learned So anyone who believed that friendliness and a nice demeanor would guarantee success when it came to economic policy and foreign affairs was seriously mistaken. Bavarian Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger may come across as a bumbling recluse, but the facts suggest that some good decisions were made behind the scenes. On the stock market, German investors also tend to trust CEOs with nice appearances and friendly demeanors. Kasper Rorstedt at Adidas came to the Franconians as a nice, friendly guy from DAX competitor Henkel, and he was believed to be successful with his calm demeanor. After a few years, the balance sheet was disastrous and the Adidas share price and growth hit the wall - nice demeanor or not. On the contrary: Rorstedt was unable to get an affair involving rapper Kanye West under control and failed in crisis management. "The balance sheet for Adidas shares over the last few years is that they have fallen from 335 euros to 100 euros, thus reducing the market value by a third to just 20 billion euros," calculates Jürgen Molnar from broker RoboMarkets. Friendly and unsuccessful However, the prime example of the supposedly nice and well-meaning CEO from Germany is Werner Baumann, former boss of the Bayer Group. He pushed through a prepared takeover of the controversial US seed giant Monsanto. Even any market participant with third-rate information could imagine at the time that experienced US lawyers would just wait for day X to hit Bayer with lawsuits that Monsanto had tied them to. However, Baumann always explained in his calm manner how sensible the takeover of the US competitor was. “It should be a necessity in the highly competitive sector,” said analyst Molnar. Baumann promised for years that they would just have to wait until his strategic move with Monsanto bore fruit. If he believed that himself, then he was extremely naive. If he didn't believe it, he was ripped off and audacious to his shareholders. Once your reputation is ruined In reality, it was a suicide mission on the part of Bayer that turned the once proud Leverkusen-based company into a pawn for plaintiffs. Baumann not only ruined the reputation of the Rhinelanders, but also cemented the stock market value below 50 euros for years to come. “A group with a value of well over 120 billion became a company that only weighs 45 billion,” says Salah Eddine-Bouhmidi from broker IG. Since 2016, Baumann has not only bulldozed values, but also the company culture. On top of that, a competitor like Novo Nordisk shows how good management works. During the period in which Baumann destroyed more than 80 billion at Bayer, Novo Nordisk gained over 200 billion. Unfortunately, German investors are significantly more invested in Adidas or Bayer than in successful companies like Novo Nordisk, precisely because they often want to believe the stories that seem friendly at first glance. Bayer is at least one of the 15 most traded stocks at broker Consorsbank, well ahead of success stories such as Google, Meta or McDonalds. Kind? Crafty? The fact that Baumann's nice appearance may be doubly deceptive is evident not only when adding up his salaries and bonuses from the past few years at Bayer.