The billion-euro profit of BMW also pays off for the major shareholders Stefan Quandt and Susanne Klatten. The siblings get a generous payout. The workforce also benefits.
Susanne Klatten, Stefan Quandt
Wednesday, 21.03.2018
14:27
The siblings Stefan Quandt and Susanne Klatten received from BMW 
shortly 1.1 billion euros in the account. Background: The car company made last year 8.7 billion euros profit. According to the proposal of the Management Board and Supervisory Board, 30 percent of this amount will be distributed to shareholders as a dividend.
Stefan Quandt owns 25.8 percent of the ordinary shares and receives 622 million euros after the Annual General Meeting, his sister Susanne Klatten gets 504 million euros for its 20.9 percent of the shares.
The management also benefits from the business figures: CEO Harald Krüger gets ten percent more income for his work – his remuneration was increased to 8.3 million euros. And BMW is also showing generosity towards the more than 80,000 employees in Germany and pays 9455 euros of profit sharing to every skilled worker.
At the annual balance sheet press conference, the Group announced its targets for the current year. BMW wants to invest up to seven billion euros in research and development. Despite this high expenditure on technology and new models, the car maker wants to generate at least as much as in 2017. Last year, the pre-tax result was 10.7 billion euros.
BMW development chief denies deliberate exhaust manipulation
The Exhaustive raid of the Munich prosecutor was only a marginal issue at the press conference. On Tuesday, around 100 officials searched rooms at the Group headquarters, at the Research and Innovation Center in Munich and at the diesel engine plant in Steyr, Austria, and secured a large number of documents.
The investigators have the suspicion that BMW similar to the Volkswagen Group has used a special software that only activates the full cleaning performance of the exhaust system when the car is on a test bench. In everyday operation, the performance-inhibiting emission control is then downshifted again. It is about a scam in about 11,400 cases, said a spokesman for the prosecutor. These are obviously the cars of the series 5 and 7, for which BMW had started a recall campaign in February.
Development chief Klaus Fröhlich dismissed the Suspicion of deliberate manipulation vehemently back. The software in the cars in question was delivered from 2014 with a software package that contained individual modules that were intended for other models. The software has changed the exhaust behavior on the test bench as well as on the road alike. An error that gave rise to a recall, but did not constitute fraud. How the mistake could come, however, Frohlich did not explain. For all further questions in this connection the public prosecutor’s office Munich is responsible. There it said only that the investigations were still at the beginning.