Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder... really?

For investors, attractiveness is all about fairly blunt attributes.
Before entering the dating market get the basics right.
Streamline, focus, reduce complexity
and mend your cash generation ability.

Make sure the equity story has both:
substance and phantasy.
Addressing just the right desires,
attracting financial as well as strategic investors.

Because in business, love is not blind!

Imagine ruling an empire where the sun never sets.

Every enduring empire shared two qualities:
one unifying purpose and local freedom.
Attributing autonomy and a fair share of wealth to local governors.
Overcoming ambiguities by thriving in a fragmented landscape.

Today’s corporations face the same challenge.
Global setups are smashing against the cliffs of a multipolar world.
The classic headquarter feels like late Rome facing the Germanic revolt.

Is your empire built to last?

Last summer…Your suppliers’ horror show.
No visibility, complexity, dependency. Cornered and exploited.
What a nightmare!

We swore. Never talk about it again. But now it’s time to flip the script.

Spend dissected in seconds. Margins stand trial. Contract risks laid bare.

Turn on the light and the horror disappears!

Once upon a time there were three little piglets. The Chief
Executive Piglet, the Chief Operations Piglet and the Chief Financial Piglet
They lived in a beautiful house, known for its glory all across the country.

Their job was clear but also demanding: constantly improving the house
so its glory would shine even brighter. They were hard working, buying
and building decoration and equipment from near and far. Soon, the house
and the garden were stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey. Despite the supervisory
board constantly demanding to tidying up the three little piglets
kept accumulating.

Miami Beach. 1989.
Linen dresses. Bright colored suits.
Kir royals and gin fizzes.
Red and yellow Testarossas on Ocean Drive.
Michael Jackson’s Thriller on your Walkman mixtape…

We got old, so did some of our business models.
Two sunset options:
A. Pack your bags, call it a day and sell.
B. Have the party of your lifetime. Be the last one standing.

It’s sunset time, baby… Enjoy the ride!

Communism is stronger than ever.
It just moved. To large corporations.
Five-year plans.
Comittees far away from reality making decisions.
Well organized vanity fairs for self-promotion.
“Not-my-money” attitude everywhere, …

It’s time for a counter-revolution!
Tear down the hierarchies!
Bring decisions to the knowledgeable!
Promote humanocracy and entrepreneurship!
Making sure the invisible hand can unfold its magic, again.

For decades, Europe cherished its hippie existence:
Make love, not war.
But with Putin and Trump, weakness just invites aggression.
Peace can only be maintained by strength and military power.

For European businesses a trillion euro market is opening.
Steered by own rules and dynamics in funding, development,
scaling and the need for supply chain autonomy.

Incumbents must speed up time-to-market
and relearn to produce at scale.
Dual-use players can tap significant opportunities.
While new kids on the block are disrupting the ecosystem…
Are YOU joining the peace party?

Open your garage.
A classic car with so much potential. A sleeping beauty covered in rust.
You always wanted to take care of it.
Be honest with yourself! You are tied up in meetings. Other priorities.
This sleeping beauty will never get the attention it deserves.

Taking care sometimes means letting go.
Passing your rusted beauty on to a new owner.
To someone with a long-term restoration vision.
To someone with the right mechanical skills.
To someone with a proven track record.
Let’s meet at your garage. Talk options.

A poker round met in your warehouses. Supply chain uncertainty,
geopolitics and recession played their game.

You did everything to serve your customers. Congratulations, you have
a “FULL HOUSE” now!

But unfortunately … recession and inflation join and go all in! Just a full
house is not a winning hand anymore. What you need is the right stock
at the right time at the right place.

You have to change the rules to win: Utilize deep analytics to challenge
your team. Take your parameters and processes to the next level. Break
functional silos. And discipline suppliers and even customers with best-
in-class negotiations.
Use the ace up your sleeve and cash out now!

Unfortunately, we are facing declining demand
with an overall unsatisfactory market situation.
Several large order cancelations… blablabla!

When things are going great, it’s about personal credit.
But when times get tough, it’s always the market’s fault.
Well, FUCK THAT!

Faster, louder and more offensive.
That’s what we need.
There’s nothing to lose, everything to gain.
Be radical in finding new growth areas!
Be aggressive in addressing new markets!
And shameless in exploiting new opportunities!
Become a business punk, or decline with the mass!

By Axel Wachholz, Group CFO, Phoenix Contact
Monday. Board Meeting with open end. Times are tough, so is competition. We are a German multi-billion tech company, 80% of
our revenue is non-German, we are family-owned since 1923 with a strong culture and entrepreneurial mindset. Our board meetings should be about global markets, customer requirements, product innovations, strategic capital allocation, organizational efficiency, and digitalization. But they are not.

By Wolfram Senger-Weiss, CEO, Gebrüder Weiss
If you run a logistics company that is more than 500 years old, you develop a certain perspective on disruption. You learn that the world was never truly stable. Stability is often just a temporary illusion created by periods of relative prosperity and peace. Trade routes have always shifted. Borders have changed. Wars have interrupted markets. Political systems have risen and disappeared. Yet goods kept moving.

By Jesko von Stechow, CFO, Westfalen 
In July 2004, Jürgen Trittin, Germany’s Federal Environment Minister,
promised that renewable energy would cost the average household no more than one euro a month – “as much as one scoop of ice cream.” It was wrong – not by a little, but by an order of magnitude. The gap between that promise and what households actually came to pay is a parable about what happens when a country governs its ambitions but not its costs.

Tobias Braun BENTELER
Justin Feinstein MauiCalm.org
Andreas Gorbach Daimler Truck
Toralf Haag Aurubis
Xiaodi Hou Bot Auto
Matthew Kaminski Journalist
Stefan Oelrich Bayer
Michael Sen Fresenius
Martin Sorrell S4 Capital
Jochen Weyrauch Dürr
Amos Yadlin MIND Israel
Patrick Zhong M31 Capital

Roberto Cingolani Leonardo
Benedikt Franke Munich Security Conference 
Ben Hodges General 
Klaus Hommels Lakestar 
Oleksandr Kamyshin Presidential Advisor Ukraine 
Sebastian Kurz Dream Security 
Tim Marshall Journalist 
Oleksandra Matviichuk Human Rights Activist 
Michael Schöllhorn Airbus Defence and Space 
Florian Seibel Quantum Systems 
Margherita Della Valle Vodafone 
Sven Weizenegger Bundeswehr 
Nadav Zafrir Check Point Software

By Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing
Board and CEO Digital Industries, Siemens

“I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of
the iceberg. I think the potential of what
[it] will do to society (…) is unimaginable.
I think we’re (…) on the cusp of
something exhilarating and terrifying.”
A prediction that is both promising and
threatening.

Kiana Aran University of California San Diego
Tessa Charlesworth Kellogg School of Management
Valerie Diele-Braun IMCD
Avi Loeb Harvard University
Lucia Morselli Pininfarina
Cedrik Neike Siemens
Victoria Ossadnik E.ON
Sebastian C. Schulte Deutz
Mark Wiedman BlackRock

By Ehud Olmert,
Former Prime Minister Israel

The morning of Saturday, October 7th,
2023 was not supposed to be of
any special significance in the life of
Israel. It was a Jewish holiday,
celebrated in a traditional manner by
many observant Jews, and also those
more secular who do not observe
regularly Jewish tradition. It turned
out to be different than any Saturday
in the modern history of Israel.

By Belén Garijo
Chair of the Executive Board & CEO
Merck

Why we need a different mindset to
take science and technology from
incremental to groundbreaking change.