One of the richest women in the world is distributing her wealth in an unusual way. Swiss assets also ends up in new hands.
Sometimes assets worth billions are linked to a single euro.
German entrepreneur and BMW heiress Susanne Klatten found this out.
Notarization by a notary
She wanted to distribute her investment holding SKion GmbH, whose name is based on her initials, among her three children. But it didn’t work out.
The investment company, founded in 2006, has a share capital of 50 million euros and this cannot be divided completely by three.
Therefore, a euro had to be found to increase the share capital to 50,000,001 euros, as the weekly magazine “Die Zeit” reported in its current issue about the case, for which a shareholders’ meeting had to be convened and a notary had to be present.
Three euros remain
Each Klatten child now receives the ordinary shares of 16,666,666 euros, which amounts to a total of 49,999,998 euros. The mother could have split the remaining two euros plus the one euro from the capital increase, but she waited.
However, as a very small shareholder in SKion GmbH, the Quandt heiress still has a stake and, according to the articles of association, reserves the right to unilaterally appoint herself to the management board at any time until her 70th birthday in 2031.
Water cleaning and nanotechnology
But what are the shares worth, whose change of ownership is only visible through entries in the German commercial register?
Well, the equity of the holding company amounts to around 4.5 billion euros.
This means that the three Klatten children, whose names were not known to the general public until a few days ago, have joined the ranks of billionaires.
However, the equity figure is deceptive, as the investments with thousands of employees in the chemical group Altana, the carbon company SGL Carbon, the water treatment company SKion Water, the battery specialist BMZ or the Israeli investment Landa in digital printing and nanotechnology all represent a multiple of the equity capital.
Schmidheiny, Frey & Co.
The company Lonrho, with investments in Africa, is also part of the group, which goes back to the Swiss entrepreneurs Rainer-Marc Frey and Thomas Schmidheiny as well as the richest resident of Switzerland, Klaus-Michael Kühne.
The chemical group Altana has recently been joined by the well-known traditional Swiss company Von Roll, which Klatten recently acquired in full – as muula.ch reported.
Primus, Secundus and Tertia
BMW heiress Klatten is now giving away almost exactly one third of her SKion GmbH to her eldest son Felix. The 32-year-old thus receives SKion Primus, so to speak.
The 30-year-old son Alexander receives SKion Secundus and the 28-year-old daughter Johanna receives SKion Tertia.
However, three euros of SKion’s share capital will continue to be held by the mother, who will also separately hold her direct 21.7% stake in the BMW car company, which she inherited from her parents.
21.07.2024/kut./ena.
