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Mannesmann was a German industrial conglomerate. It was originally established as a manufacturer of steel pipes in 1890 under the name "Deutsch-Österreichische Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG". (Loosely translated: "German-
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
n Mannesmann pipe mills AG"). In the twentieth century, Mannesmann's product range grew and the company expanded into numerous sectors; starting from various steel products and trading to mechanical and electrical engineering, automotive and telecommunications. From 1955, the conglomerate's management holding with headquarters in
Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...
was named Mannesmann AG. The particular success of the corporate activities in the area of telecommunications that started in 1990 was the predominant reason for the takeover of Mannesmann by the British telecommunications company
Vodafone Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It ...
in 2000, still one of the largest-ever company takeovers worldwide. Back then, the Mannesmann Group had 130,860 employees worldwide and revenues of €23.27 billion. The name Mannesmann ceased to exist in the engineering, automotive and telecommunications sectors soon after Vodafone purchased the company. It lives on in the steel industry, particularly in the steel tube and pipe industry, as the German steel manufacturer
Salzgitter AG Salzgitter AG is a German company, one of the largest steel producers in Europe with an annual output of around seven million tonnes. With over 100 subsidiaries and associated companies, the Group is structured in five divisions – Steel, Tr ...
bought the pipe production division of Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG (today Mannesmannröhren-Werke GmbH), as well as the Mannesmann brand.


History


Establishment and growth as an international tube manufacturer

In 1886, the German brothers Reinhard (1856–1922) and Max Mannesmann (1857–1915) received the world's first patent for their invention of a process for rolling seamless steel pipes ( Mannesmann process). Between 1887 and 1889 they founded tube mills with several different business partners in
Bous, Germany Bous is a municipality in the district of Saarlouis, in Saarland, Germany. It is situated on the river Saar, approx. 5 km southeast of Saarlouis, and 15 km west of Saarbrücken. Sister cities * Koulikoro, Mali * Quétigny, France ...
, in
Komotau Chomutov (; german: Komotau) is a city in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 46,000 inhabitants. There are almost 80,000 inhabitants in the city's wider metropolitan area. The city centre is well preserved and is protec ...
/
Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...
, in
Landore Landore ( cy, Glandŵr) is a district and community in Swansea, Wales. The district falls in the Landore council ward. A mainly residential area, it is located about 2.5 miles north of Swansea city centre. The north-easterly part of Landore i ...
/
Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
and in their home town
Remscheid Remscheid () is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is, after Wuppertal and Solingen, the third-largest municipality in Bergisches Land, being located on the northern edge of the region, on the south side of the Ruhr area. Remscheid h ...
/Germany. In 1890, due to technical and financial start-up problems, the tube and pipe mills existing on the continent were folded into Deutsch-Österreichische Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG. The new company had its headquarters in
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. Reinhard and Max Mannesmann formed the first
board of directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...
but left it in 1893. In that year the company headquarters were moved to Düsseldorf - at that time the center of the German tube and pipe industry. The company was renamed Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG in 1908. In the following years the company's position in the export business, which was important from the beginning, was consolidated and expanded by the acquisition of the Mannesmann tube mill in Landore/Wales and by the founding of a Mannesmann tube mill in
Dalmine Dalmine ( Bergamasque: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Bergamo in the Italian region of Lombardy, located about northeast of Milan and about southwest of Bergamo. As of 31 December 2004, it had a population of 22,326 and an ar ...
/Italy. Branch offices for storage and direct sales business, sometimes with tube processing workshops and pipeline construction capacities, were set up in cooperation with well-established companies all over the world, especially in
South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
,
Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
, and
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
. In addition, Mannesmannröhren-Werke took up the production of welded steel pipes, stainless steel pipes and other type of pipes and tubes. The company became the worldwide leading manufacturer of steel tube and pipe Wessel, Horst A.: Kontinuität im Wandel. 100 Jahre Mannesmann, Düsseldorf 1990 (in German)International Directory of Company Histories, Vol 38, 2001


Expansion into a coal and steel conglomerate

In the first decades of its existence, Mannesmann was a pure manufacturer and therefore highly dependent on third-party deliveries of starting material. To reduce the associated risk, the company started to broaden into a vertically integrated iron and steel group in the first half of the twentieth century. The group had its own ore and coal production, steel manufacturers and processors as well as an integrated trading division. In the 1950s Mannesmann established pipe mills in
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and
Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...


Further diversification

In 1955, the group's management holding was renamed Mannesmann AG. The group continued to develop into a highly diversified conglomerate. The corporate sectors engineering and automotive founded in the late 1960s comprised famous companies as e.g. Rexroth,
Demag Demag Cranes AG is a German heavy equipment manufacturer now controlled by Japan-based Tadano via a $215 million deal. The roots of Demag date back prior to its formation, but became Märkische Maschinenbau-Anstalt, Ludwig A.-G in 1906 as the ...
, Dematic,
Fichtel & Sachs ZF Sachs AG, also known as Fichtel & Sachs, was founded in Schweinfurt in 1895 and was a well-known German family business. At its last point as an independent company, the company name was Fichtel & Sachs AG. In 1997, the automotive supplier wa ...
, VDO, Mannesman Sachs, Boge, Kienzle,
Krauss-Maffei KraussMaffei is a German manufacturer of injection molding machines, machines for plastics extrusion technology, and reaction process machinery. It was acquired by ChemChina in 2016. History Locomotives KraussMaffei was formed in 1931 from a me ...
, Hartmann & Braun and Tally. Within the Mannesmann Group several of these companies evolved into world market leaders in their respective business sectors.


Telecommunications

In 1990, following the liberalization of the German telecommunications market, Mannesmann set up a new business sector and established Germany's first cellular network carrier in private ownership known as D2 Mannesmann. The network company was called Mannesmann Mobilfunk GmbH. It was the main competitor to Germany's incumbent carrier,
Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (; short form often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a German telecommunications company that is headquartered in Bonn and is the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. Deutsche Telekom was ...
's
T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic (T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland (T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobile ...
, also known as D1. Additionally, Mannesmann extended its telecommunications division with integrated services covering mobile and fixed network telephony, Internet, and TeleCommerce with companies in Germany, Italy, UK and Austria


Takeover by Vodafone and aftermath

The Europe-wide telecommunication branch of Mannesmann was extraordinarily successful and so in 1999 the Mannesmann Group hatched a plan to spin off the other divisions. Through a stock exchange flotation under the name of Mannesmann Atecs AG, these industrial divisions were to be combined in a separate enterprise that would be one of the largest companies listed in the German stock index
DAX Dax or DAX may refer to: Business and organizations * DAX, stock market index of the top 40 German companies ** DAX 100, an expanded index of 100 stocks, superseded by the HDAX ** TecDAX, stock index of the top 30 German technology firms * Dax ...
. However, before these plans could materialize, a historic takeover battle lasting several months ended with the acquisition of Mannesmann by the British mobile phone company Vodafone in 2000. On 4 February 2000 Mannesmann's
supervisory board In corporate governance, a governance board also known as council of delegates are chosen by the stockholders of a company to promote their interests through the governance of the company and to hire and fire the board of directors. In civil s ...
eventually agreed to a takeover price of 190 billion €, which was the largest takeover price ever paid until that date and still is the highest. The telecommunications division of Mannesmann was subsequently incorporated into the Vodafone Group. The other divisions were resold to various companies soon after the deal. The origins of Mannesmann, the pipe production activities of Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG, were sold to
Salzgitter AG Salzgitter AG is a German company, one of the largest steel producers in Europe with an annual output of around seven million tonnes. With over 100 subsidiaries and associated companies, the Group is structured in five divisions – Steel, Tr ...
along with the brand name Mannesmann.
Siemens AG Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...
bought the majority of Atecs Mannesmann AG, including automobile components ( VDO Adolf Schindling AG, Mannesmann Sachs, Boge GmbH), cranes and locomotives ( Mannesman Demag
Krauss-Maffei KraussMaffei is a German manufacturer of injection molding machines, machines for plastics extrusion technology, and reaction process machinery. It was acquired by ChemChina in 2016. History Locomotives KraussMaffei was formed in 1931 from a me ...
GmbH), logistics ( Mannesmann Dematic AG), and defense (
Krauss-Maffei Wegmann Krauss-Maffei Wegmann GmbH & Co. KG (KMW) is an arms industry company based in Munich, Germany. The company produces various types of equipment as well as rail locomotives, tanks, self-propelled artillery, and other armoured vehicles. KMW was ...
);
Robert Bosch GmbH Robert Bosch GmbH (; ), commonly known as Bosch and stylized as BOSCH, is a German multinational engineering and technology company headquartered in Gerlingen, Germany. The company was founded by Robert Bosch in Stuttgart in 1886. Bosch is 9 ...
acquired Rexroth, an industrial engineering company.
KraussMaffei KraussMaffei is a German manufacturer of injection molding machines, machines for plastics extrusion technology, and reaction process machinery. It was acquired by ChemChina in 2016. History Locomotives KraussMaffei was formed in 1931 from a me ...
logos and trademarks are transferred to Krauss-Maffei Kunststofftechnik GmbH, plastics and molding equipment subsidiary that was spun off in 1986.


Controversies

During the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, when the company was chaired by
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
activist Wilhelm Zangen,
slave labour Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
was employed at their tube rolling mills. Zangen served four months in prison for his involvement, although he remained a leading figure with Mannesmann until his retirement in 1966. In 2000, Mannesmann was acquired by Vodafone Group Plc. in a tax-free exchange of 53.7 Vodafone shares for each share of Mannesmann. This was a controversial takeover, since never before in Germany had a company as large and successful as Mannesmann been acquired in a
hostile takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to ...
by a non-German owner. The merger was said to have been engineered in a private deal concluded between Mannesmann's management and Vodafone. The acquisition was spearheaded by Vodafone's Chief Executive,
Chris Gent Sir Christopher Charles Gent HonFREng (born 10 May 1948) is a British businessman, He is the former chief executive officer of Vodafone, a British multinational mobile phone company. Until 2015, he served as the non-exec chairman of GlaxoSmith ...
, and
Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...
' Scott Mead, who was then the chief advisor on the deal. The circumstances of the deal and the (not only for German standards) particularly high severance payments awarded to leading managers of the company led in 2004 to a trial at Landgericht Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf Regional Court) - the so-called Mannesmann trial. The accused, among others the chairman of the supervisory board at the time of the takeover,
Josef Ackermann Josef Meinrad Ackermann (born 7 February 1948) is a Swiss banker, former Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, and former chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank. He has also been a member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, th ...
, and the former CEO of Mannesmann, Klaus Esser, were initially granted a full discharge by the court. However, after revision proceedings, the Bundesgerichtshof
Federal Court of Justice The Federal Court of Justice (german: Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) is the highest court in the system of ordinary jurisdiction (''ordentliche Gerichtsbarkeit'') in Germany, founded in 1950. It has its seat in Karlsruhe with two panels being situat ...
overruled the contested judgment and referred the case back for retrial at the Landgericht. On 29 November 2006, the proceedings were terminated, with the defendants agreeing to settlements amounting to millions of euros. Under the terms of the takeover deal, Mannesmann sought assurances from Vodafone that the Mannesmann brand and name would be kept under the new owners. This was agreed and the deal was announced. However, not long after this, Vodafone reneged on the deal and rebranded.


Individual subsidiaries


Mannesmann Arcor

Mannesmann
Arcor Arcor is an Argentine confectionery company. Arcor may also refer to: * Arcor (telecommunications), a German telecommunications company * Arcore (Lombard: ''Arcor''), a municipality in Lombardy, Italy See also

* ARCore, a software development ...
was a fixed line telephony and internet company. It has been owned solely by Vodafone since May 2008, when
Deutsche Bahn The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder. describes itself as the se ...
(18.17%) and
Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
(8.18%) sold their shares to Vodafone."Vodafone übernimmt Arcor vollständig" (in German). Deutscher Depeschendienst. 2008-05-19. Retrieved 2008-09-02


References


External links

*
Images of British Mannesmann Tube Co., WalesHöpner, M. and G. Jackson. 2006. “Revisiting the Mannesmann takeover: how markets for corporate control emerge” Management Review (2006) 3, 142–155.
{{Authority control Vodafone Manufacturing companies established in 1890 History of Düsseldorf Manufacturing companies based in Düsseldorf Companies formerly listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange Telecommunications companies established in 1890 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 2000 1890 establishments in Germany 2000 mergers and acquisitions German companies disestablished in 2000 German companies established in 1890