During the course of the Saurer transaction, it came to serious violations of the statutory duty of loyalty, the obligation to maintain business secrets and the Rieter Code of Conduct by the two members of the Board of Directors Luc Tack (Picanol N.V.) and Stefaan Haspeslagh (Tessenderlo Group). They have used information internal to the Board of Directors in order to compete with Rieter through their own offer.
The Board of Directors considers this to be a strong violation of Rieter’s interests, to the detriment of all of its stakeholders, and a sustained breach of the relationship of trust within the Board of Directors which makes further cooperation impossible.
Therefore, the Board of Directors of Rieter Holding Ltd. intends to convene an Extraordinary General Meeting at which its members, Luc Tack and Stefaan Haspeslagh, are to be dismissed.
To protect Rieter’s interests, the Board of Directors will file a criminal complaint against the two members of the Board of Directors.
The date of the Extraordinary General Meeting will be announced at the appropriate time.
Short comment by Virginia F. Bodmer-Altura, TextileFuture’s Publisher: It is not the first time that Board Members are involved in a compromising act. I personally noted about 30 years ago that such acts were taking place when another important acquisition took place. On top of the faulty behaviour of some members of the board – also at that time -the Deutsche Bank was involved. I had the feeling and the proofs for that and I published a regarding article – inbetween of a great research on a completely different matter – this article was leading to great actions against my person by Rieter at the time, including a deep look into my banking account. I noted at the time that the congenial order on Rieter’s board was leading to such prohibited actions in the long time ago. The Board of Rieter also today is a complete body of males, and I would bet on the fact that the congenial situation persists until today. If the Board would also consist of two females, I think that faulty actions would be discovered before the faulty board members would have acted.
As to the acquisition of the three businesses by Rieter from Saurer I wish to comment as follows: To avoid competition commissoners actions, there is no total takeover of Saurer even when it would have given Rieter an exclusiv situation in the spinning sector. But the three acquired businesses are cleverly completing Rieters unique position. It has to be said that Saurer has had tremendous financial trouble and that Rieter wrote in its half year results to have benefited from these financial difficulties in the results and orders. Also other competitors profited from the troublesome situation of Saurer. Two companies of Saurer in Germany had to declare a sort of Chapter 11 to get protection. Therefore it would not be a surprise if also further parts of the Saurer Group will be sold to another competitor in the near future.