| chinaman - Dienstag, 26. September 2006 - 06:20 |
| Handelsblatt Nr. 184 vom 22.09.06 Seite 17 Investor ändert die Strategie Schwedische Beteiligungsholding wendet sich allmählich stärker dem Private-Equity-Geschäft zu HELMUT STEUER | STOCKHOLM Die Holding der mächtigen schwedischen Industrellenfamilie Wallenberg, Investor, ist dabei, ihre Anlagestrategie grundlegend zu verändern. Auch wenn sie ihren Scania-Anteil bislang nicht an MAN verkaufen will, steht der Posten nach Ansicht der meisten Experten in Stockholm zur Disposition. "Das ist eine Frage des Preises", sagt ein Analyst, der die Holding seit Jahren aus nächster Nähe beobachtet. Investor kontrolliert bislang viele namhafte schwedische Konzerne wie Atlas Copco, Ericsson, Electrolux und die Bank SEB. An Scania hält die Gesellschaft 10,8 Prozent des Kapitals und 19,3 Prozent der Stimmrechte. Stand die Firma bislang für Kontinuität, zeichnet sich in jüngster Zeit unter dem relativ neuen Investor-Chef Börje Ekholm eine Neuausrichtung ab. Ekholm war bei Investor verantwortlich für die nicht an der Börse notierten Beteiligungen, bevor er die Leitung der Holding übernahm. Seit seinem Amtsantritt im vergangenen Jahr hat sich die Holding stärker auf eine kurzfristig hohe Rendite konzentriert, hat sich in nicht notierten Unternehmen engagiert und Unternehmen übernommen, um sie von der Börse zu nehmen - etwa den Medizintechnik-Konzern Gambro, den Investor zusammen mit der ebenfalls von Wallenberg dominierten Private-Equity-Gesellschaft EQT für umgerechnet 4,1 Mrd. Euro gekauft hat. Ekholm selbst sagt, nicht notierte Unternehmen hätten den Vorteil, "dass die Rendite nur den eigenen Aktionären zugute kommt". Derzeit liegen die Investor-Beteiligungen im Gesamtwert von 140 Mrd. Kronen (15,2 Mrd. Euro) noch zu 84 Prozent in notierten Unternehmen. Doch der Anteil der nicht-notierten Beteiligungen ist gestiegen. "Unter Ekholm hat eine neue Ära für Investor begonnen", sagt ein Analyst, der nicht namentlich genannt werden will. Der Wunsch nach Anonymität ist in schwedischen Finanzkreisen nicht sehr üblich, aber mit der Familiendynastie will sich offenbar niemand anlegen. Die meisten Experten sagen, dass die Zukunft für Investor im Private-Equity-Geschäft liegt. Ein Grund für das neue Interesse an nicht notierten Unternehmen ist die geringere öffentliche Kontrolle. Außerdem sei es heute deutlich schwieriger geworden, an einem Unternehmen - wie bislang bei Investor üblich - einen 20- bis 30-prozentigen Anteil zu erwerben. "Deshalb ist die Private-Equity-Ausrichtung völlig logisch", sagt ein Experte. Investor selbst sieht das anders: Die Holding, die in diesem Jahr ihr 90-jähriges Bestehen feiert, "baut weiterhin Unternehmen auf und entwickelt sie", sagt ein Firmensprecher. Und: "Im Prinzip" sei die Darstellung, die Holding verändere ihre Strategie, nicht richtig. Tatsächlich hat schon Marcus Wallenberg 1946 als Familienoberhaupt gesagt, dass "die einzige Tradition, die bewahrt werden sollte, vom Alten zum Neuen zu gehen" ist. Damals stiegen die Wallenbergs aus ihrer Beteiligung an Eisenbahnunternehmen aus und investierten in die Luftfahrt. In den vergangenen Monaten hat die Wallenberg-Holding mehrere Milliardengeschäfte abgewickelt, die den Spekulationen über eine stärkere Private-Equity-Orientierung Nahrung geben: So wurde die Gartengeräte-Sparte von Electrolux, Husqvarna, vom Mutterkonzern abgetrennt und an die Börse gebracht. Derzeit veräußert die Holding derzeit ihre Beteiligung an dem IT-Spezialisten WM Data. Darüber hinaus wird gemunkelt, dass Investor sich vom Börsenbetreiber OMX, dem Arzneimittelkonzern Astra Zeneca und Electrolux trennen wird. Was Investor mit dem Geld machen will, ist unklar. Doch nach dem Regierungswechsel in Schweden steht eine Privatisierungswelle an: Die teilstaatliche Bank Nordea zählt zu den ersten Objekten, die die neue bürgerliche Regierung verkaufen will. In Stockholm halten sich die Gerüchte, dass die Wallenberg-Familie Nordea mit der SEB verschmelzen könnte. Und da wären die Einnahmen aus einem Verkauf des Scania-Postens sicherlich willkommen. Steuer, Helmut 22. September 2006 |
| al_sting - Mittwoch, 16. März 2016 - 17:51 |
| Artikel im Economist über Investor AB und die Wallenbergs: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21694555-lessons-100-years-familys-industrial-empire-nordic-pyramid The Wallenberg group A Nordic pyramid The lessons from 100 years of a family’s industrial empire SWEDEN is a progressive place. Women participate fully in the workforce. Companies are transparent, generally uncorrupt and often globally minded. Enthusiasm for technology helps Stockholm flourish as a lively startup centre for gaming, music and fintech firms. Business leaders earnestly talk of the benefits of going green, caring for workers and being ethical. In politics, Sweden is egalitarian, redistributing wealth through high taxes. So it is a puzzle that Swedish capitalism appears so strikingly unequal, with a small number of individuals owning and running large chunks of the economy. Credit Suisse, in its annual report on global wealth in October, pointed to findings that the richest 1% of Swedish households control 24% of the population’s total wealth, making it only a bit less unequal than India (25.7%). In contrast, Spain’s 1% control 16.5% of the wealth, and Japan’s only 4.3%. As in many countries, family-controlled businesses are the norm in Sweden. But as Randall Morck of the University of Alberta in Canada has noted, Sweden is an extreme case among rich countries in that one particular family, the Wallenbergs, holds such sway in business. The foundations were laid for the dynasty’s fortunes 160 years ago when André Oscar Wallenberg, the globe-trotting son of a Lutheran bishop, returned from America with a book on how to set up a bank, and founded Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB). The bank flourished, and began buying chunks of distressed industrial firms, leading the family to set up a holding company, Investor, 100 years ago. At the height of the Wallenbergs’ pre-eminence, in the 1970s, their various firms together employed 40% of Sweden’s industrial workforce and represented 40% of the total worth of the Stockholm stockmarket. Like most modern manufacturers, the industrial firms in their portfolio, including ABB and Atlas Copco (engineering), AstraZeneca (drugs) and Electrolux (appliances), are no longer huge employers. But Investor, plus SEB and the other listed firms in Investor’s portfolio, still account for about a third of the stockmarket’s value. And they generally do better than the rest: in the past decade, Investor’s shares have doubled, whereas the OMX Stockholm 30 Index rose by just 40%. Swedes often talk about the collection of companies as Wallenbergsfaren, “the Wallenberg sphere”, and to its smaller local rivals as “systems”. One of the largest systems is Industrivarden, whose portfolio includes Handelsbanken and the maker of Volvo Trucks. It has passed through several hands down the years, including those of Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of the IKEA furniture stores; its leading investor nowadays is Fredrik Lundberg, the son of a construction magnate. The Wallenbergs and Industrivarden both have large stakes in Ericsson, a maker of telecoms equipment. Many Wallenberg firms have roots in the 19th century, before Investor was founded. But they have generally flourished under the active ownership and close managerial oversight of the family. The sphere is now overseen by a genial triad of middle-aged men, two brothers and a cousin: Jacob, Peter and Marcus Wallenberg (pictured, next page). A transition to a sixth generation of the family is looming, with the next set of leaders to be drawn from a pool of around 30 relatives in their 30s or younger. A hitherto male-dominated empire is then likely to have some Wallenberg women right at the top. Already, Caroline Ankarcrona, younger sister to Marcus Wallenberg and in her late 40s, has been running the main family foundation, KAW, for four years. “Sphere” is one way of describing the Wallenberg holdings. A more pointed term (literally as well as figuratively) is the one Mr Morck uses: a pyramid. The Wallenbergs are thought to have combined personal wealth of just $1 billion or so, but they control, or have strong influence over, businesses worth hundreds of times as much. They do so through a number of foundations. KAW, the largest, is named after two ancestors who provided the largest endowment, 99 years ago. KAW has 50.1% of voting rights in Investor, chaired by Jacob Wallenberg. It in turn holds stakes—and often outsized voting rights—in their main, listed firms, at which family members often take leadership roles. (Through a division called Patricia Industries, Investor holds majority stakes in financial, telecoms and other firms, and is also a founder-investor in a private-equity fund, EQT.) Fear of tunnelling These successive layers let the Wallenbergs multiply their clout. Investor has beaten the Stockholm market handsomely, but its listed businesses often trade at a discount to their global peers, points out Thomas Zellweger, who directs a centre studying business families in St Gallen, Switzerland. Outside investors may be discounting the shares out of fear of “tunnelling”, in which a controlling family uses one firm to prop up another—though Mr Morck notes that there is scant evidence of this. Shareholders may also fear a controlling family pursuing its private obsessions, while neglecting the business: an early Wallenberg, for instance, campaigned assiduously for a single global currency, based on gold and the French franc. They may also worry that the next generation of Wallenberg bosses are chosen for internal family reasons rather than on merit. The Wallenbergs have managed their successions well over the years, but there is no guarantee this will always be so. The Wallenberg empire might in theory be threatened if, as in other countries, there were moves towards curbing the use of the dual-class shares that let the family exercise such sway over its firms. In Ericsson, for example, Investor has just 5.3% of total stock, but controls 21.5% of votes. In Electrolux, Investor has 15.5% of the stock, but 30% of voting rights. Family firms often use such dual shares (The Economist Group, largely owned by European business families, uses them too), but prevalence does not mean popularity. However, the family has long enjoyed good political connections: for all its support for free trade and open markets abroad, until the 1990s it had decades of help from protectionist policies that kept foreign predators at bay. That the KAW and other foundations get the Wallenbergs’ share of profits helps shield them from Sweden’s top income-tax rate, of 62%. The foundations’ beneficence also helps shield them from criticism: the KAW, for instance, makes $250m of grants a year, notably to fund basic research and education. Nordic, not Anglo-Saxon Discuss their set-up with the Wallenbergs and they say “Anglo-Saxons”, schooled in British and American ideas that companies are best owned by masses of small investors (or pension funds), are wilfully blind to the benefits of family-dominated firms. The family argues that ownership models need not be “black and white”, that theirs has proved it can deliver a “nice track record” for more than a century-and-a-half. Well-run family firms can ensure modern virtues—transparency, professional management, clear communication, agility—as easily as those Anglo-Saxons. Tour the headquarters of Ericsson, and its CEO, Hans Vestberg, offers a similar argument: a stolid company, founded in 1876 (and part-owned by the Wallenbergs since 1950), can be nimble, even ruthless. Ericsson frittered away the strong position it once had as a maker of mobile handsets. But Mr Vestberg talks optimistically of how it will prosper from the coming launch of fifth-generation (5G) wireless telecoms and the “internet of things”. Ericsson, with a $5 billion annual research-and-development budget, files 4,000 patents a year, he says. In less than two years it has hired 30,000 staff, but also let go 28,000, to make possible a shift from a company that sells products to one more focused on services. Gunnar Wetterberg, author of a book on the Wallenberg family, argues that having most of its wealth locked up in the foundations best explains its long-term success: family feuds are discouraged when no relative can dream of running off to Bahamas with all the loot. “There are no family fights,” says one Wallenberg. “No one understands how it works, but it works well.” Other observers prefer explanations that focus on the personality and skills of a mostly self-effacing, hard-working and polyglot clan. Their spells working in the companies make them better owners. Carina Beckerman, who has just written a book on culture and leadership in Wallenberg companies, lauds two qualities that help encourage success. One is doggedness: the Wallenbergs found few firms, but they stick with existing ones, seek new markets and try ways to make them flourish. She notes that Atlas Copco had to be rescued from near-bankruptcy three times in its first 27 years, but now flourishes. The second quality, says Ms Beckerman, is a near-obsession with getting the right managers in place: it is often the top item on the agenda whenever the Wallenberg leaders gather. They typically favour loyal insiders, not show-offs who promise dramatic change. Not everything the family touches turns to gold. Efforts to go digital, just over a decade ago, by investing in a pair of online firms, Spray Networks and Bredbandsbolaget, had disappointing outcomes. Scania, a lorry-maker that has flourished since being bought by Volkswagen in 2000, was sold too cheaply, says Ms Beckerman. But the sphere’s more recent efforts to expand its medical interests have been more successful—witness its investments in Sobi, which specialises in treatments for haemophilia and other rare diseases, and in Mölnlycke Health Care, which makes products for use in surgery and treating wounds. Even if its dominance of the Swedish business scene has diminished in recent decades, the Wallenberg sphere looks set to go on prospering in the hands of its sixth generation. That makes them mere parvenus compared with the Lovenskiold family across the border in Norway: now led by its 13th generation, it claims a 360-year history and runs successful timber and furniture firms. But there may be a shared recipe for such longevity. “The majority of the really successful, long-lasting families are, like the Wallenbergs, convivial, modest, see the hard work needed and do it quietly,” says a close observer. If they were a bunch of work-shy show-offs, Swedes would surely have noticed the inequality by now. |
| al_sting - Mittwoch, 16. März 2016 - 17:55 |
| MMI hat dankenswerter Weise die Performance von Berkshire Heathaway und Investor AB verglichen: "Die Performance ist auf jeden Fall vergleichbar bzw. sogar besser. 20 Jahre Performance Investor AB vs. Berkshire (in USD): 10,93% p.a. (+695%) vs. 9,15% (475%) Über 27 Jahre (längster verfügbarer zeitraum in Bloomberg) führt Buffett allerdings 12,8% zu 10,4% p.a." Der NAV von Investor liegt zum Jahresende bei 357 SEK, der Aktienkurs aktuell bei 287 SEK. Also 20% Abschlag auf den NAV. Für ein Unternehmen mit so einem langfristigen Wachstum klingt erstaunlich günstig. Investor AB ist damit auf meine Watchlist gewandert. Habt ihr euch mit dem Unternehmen schon mal beschäftigt? |
| levdul1 - Donnerstag, 17. März 2016 - 15:06 |
| Nein. Gibt es irgendwie gute Website mit den Investitionen ? |
| al_sting - Donnerstag, 17. März 2016 - 22:10 |
| http://www.investorab.com/investors-media/investor-in-figures/key-figures/ Ansonsten will ich in der nächsten Zeit mal anfangen zu suchen. Die bisherigen Daten sehen so aus, als könnte sich eine tiefergehende Analyse lohnen. |
| levdul1 - Freitag, 18. März 2016 - 10:30 |
| HM. Find ich jetzt nicht so den Knaller. Ich weiß auch nicht, wie man mit Ericsson & Co auf eine außergewöhnliche Langfristrendite kommt. Wie sieht denn der DAX im 27-Jahres-Vergleich aus ? ich erinnere mich, daß unser langweiliger DAX auch 9% im Durchschnitt macht. |
| al_sting - Mittwoch, 23. März 2016 - 09:01 |
| Nach etwas Ruhen stimme ich Levdul zu. Investor scheint auf lange Sicht vergleichbar gut zu sein wie Berkshire. Das ist eine Leistung und würde den Wert für ein auf lange Ruhezeiten ausgelegtes Depot qualifizieren. Aber um meinem impliziten Anspruch an das Depot von 10-15% per anno zu genügen, bräuchte es noch ein weiteres Schmankerl, ähnlich der Rückkaufansage bei Berkshire. Investor hat derzeit einen Abschlag auf den NAV von 20%. Im langjährigen Mittel soll dieser Abschlag 10-40% betragen. Also nix, was ich als zusätzliches Schmankerl ansehen würde. In dem Sinn: Ein guter Wert für die Watchlist gut geführter Unternehmen, aber vorerst nicht mehr. |