SAP AG founders and management carefully arranged the company’s flotation so that they retained control of the company. However, supervisory board member Hans-Werner Hector parked his 10.46% of SAP’s voting equity in the offshore Eugenia Trust on the UK island of Jersey, where Union Bank of Switzerland acts as trustee, controlling the shares and won’t give out any information about its intentions. The rest of the SAP management is annoyed about it, because it reduces their control to 65.69% of the votes, but under German law, 25% plus one share represents a blocking minority, enabling anyone that can gain control of that number of shares to paralyze the company by voting down equity raising or restructuring measures. According to the Wall Street Journal, Herr Hector apparently failed to appreciate the effect of what he was doing, but Dietmar Hopp, chairman of SAP’s management board, is furious about it, and wants Hector’s resignation.
