
So, should it surprise anyone to hear that an individual who stands to gain in the divorce of Daimler and Chrysler is apparently the matchmaker who put together the doomed marriage?
The German press began reporting in recent days that former DaimlerChrysler head Jürgen Schrempp, who was forced out in 2005 at a low point in the merger’s fortunes, has stock options in the company that he could cash in for up to $134 million. (For example, see this story in Der Spiegel )
Mr. Schrempp and other senior DaimlerChrysler executives were given options from 2000 to 2004 to buy as much as 14.5 million options. The stock had started trading at $80 in October 1998, the heady days after the “merger of equals” was first consummated. By 2003, it had fallen to about $30 a share.
Since Mr. Schrempp left, the stock has rebounded under the care of new management to as high as $90 a share. Analysts have predicted it could go up to as much as $134 a share as the merger approaches final unwinding.
Chrysler was worth an estimated $36 billion when DaimlerBenz swallowed it up. Cerberus Capital Management is buying it for about $29 billion less than that. Other notable casualties in the final box score: 40,000 jobs lost so far, shuttered factories, outsourced production, supplier bankruptcies.
According to Der Spiegel, Daimler still supplies Mr. Schrempp with an office on the 13th floor of Mercedes-Benz’s Munich skyscraper, employs his secretary, and pays his office manager — who is his wife (and former secretary) Lydia — a reported yearly salary of $269,000.
All too often in business, it seems nothing succeeds quite like failure.
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