Wacker changes legal form to stock corporation
Wacker announced that it has changed its legal form from private limited company (GmbH) to stock corporation (AG).
Wacker made this decision to gain more financing flexibility. "Private limited company, as a legal form, involves serious financing limitations, especially when injecting equity capital," explained Chief Financial Officer Dr. Joachim Rauhut. "In the context of the new Basel Capital Accord (Basel II) this could translate into tighter loan conditions in the future," he continued. "So, we took the precautionary step of converting to a stock corporation. This legal form offers us sufficient flexibility to avoid the competitive disadvantages of more restrictive loan conditions."
In the same announcement, Wacker stated that Dr. Thomas Strüngmann and Prof. Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker have joined its supervisory board, effective September 26, 2005. The two new appointees succeed Dr. Dirk Oldenburg and Robert Koehler, who have left the board.
In 1986, Dr. Thomas Strüngmann (55) and his brother, Andreas, founded Hexal AG, which Novartis acquired this February. Prof. Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker (64) teaches biochemistry at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians University. He has been president of the German Research Foundation since 1998.
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