Commitment
2000: Beginning of the employee shareholding scheme
1. January 2000
2000: Beginning of the employee shareholding scheme
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Volkmar Held
As a freelance writer, Volkmar Held reports for voestalpine on topics that move people. The content of his stories ranges from archaeometallurgy to future technologies.
In 2000, the management and the Works Council of the voestalpine Group developed a concept to enable the employees to become shareholders of the company: the Mitarbeiterbeteiligung Privatstiftung, a private foundation.
Because, by the end of the 1990s, continuing privatization of voestalpine AG was on the horizon, the Works Council and management were deliberating whether and how the Group’s employees could take on the role of a core shareholder in the future. The goal was to stabilize the ownership structure through bundled voting rights in the AGM, thus protecting the company against hostile takeovers.
The Mitarbeiterbeteiligung Privatstiftung became the appropriate instrument to accomplish this; today, it exercises all of the employee voting rights at the AGM and participates in fundamental strategic decisions through a representative on the Supervisory Board of voestalpine AG.
For more information about the employee shareholding scheme see: Corporate Website
Two decades ago voestalpine AG started out on its path to becoming a privatized and exchange-listed company. The ‘IPO 1995—20 years on the stock exchange’ series describes key events on the path to becoming an internationally successful steel-based technology and capital goods group.
All IPO blog articles
Volkmar Held