It is a speech that is rarely given by DAX managers: Theodor Weimer, CEO of Deutsche Börse AG, gave unusually clear vent to his displeasure with the traffic light coalition during an appearance by the Bavarian Economic Advisory Council.
Weimer gave the speech on April 17 at a conference at the Bayrischer Hof in Munich, but it was only later published on YouTube by the Economic Council.
In it, Weimer reports on meetings with representatives of the federal government. “I have just had my 18th meeting with Economics Minister and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and I can tell you: It is a sheer catastrophe.” At the beginning, he was interested and listened. “Now the fundamentalists are increasingly coming through.”
As head of the German Stock Exchange, Weimer is Mr. Dax – the contact person for investments in all large listed companies in Germany. But interest in investing money in Germany has now collapsed, and investments require risk premiums. “Our reputation in the world has never been as bad as it is now – never!” says Weimer.
“They just shake their heads. They say: Where have the German virtues gone? We no longer know how to read you in Germany,” the 64-year-old explains. “If you carry on like this, we will avoid you even more and stay even further away from Germany.”
According to outsiders, Germany is on the way to becoming an old economy like Japan. The Asian country has struggled with deflation for decades: falling sales, a lack of investment, falling wages and hardly any economic growth. “Economically speaking, we are on the way to becoming a developing country,” says Weimer.
One reason is that Germany has destroyed its automobile industry. “We have allowed our business model to be talked down,” Weimer rages. The CO₂ regulations have pushed the car companies into a corner from which they can no longer escape. If you buy a BMW 7 Series, you only get a six-cylinder hybrid in Germany, but a pure eight-cylinder in the USA. “Then our supervisory board tells me that we have to make the company cars smaller,” says Weimer. “That’s stupid stuff. We have to make the company cars big again. That creates growth.”
He also makes a harsh judgment about Germany’s migration policy. “Our migration policy is seen as completely wrong by everyone,” says Weimer. “Our focus on do-gooderism is not shared anywhere.” From an economic perspective, migration means recruiting skilled workers who speak the language and generate social product, but not “who collect 50 percent of the citizens’ income and send it somewhere else.” Germany has also been asleep when it comes to defense and digitalization.
The times when people said that Germany doesn’t speak badly are over, says Weimer at the end of his speech. And he quotes a recently deceased statesman from the Federal Republic of Germany. “It’s over, Wolfgang Schäuble would say.”
