By Roberto Lamprecht
After the investor quake around Lars Windhorst, there is a risk of a long, dirty divorce!
Investor Lars Windhorst (45) announced the Hertha exit on Wednesday, raging against Kay Bernstein: “In a conversation with us, the President named the “break” with Tennor and Lars Windhorst as the goal.
That’s why we’re ending our commitment to Hertha BSC and officially offering the club to buy back our majority stake of 64.7 percent at the price at that time.”
Windhorst has invested a total of 374 million euros since 2019. He will not be able to achieve this amount because Hertha’s value has now fallen sharply. Heads were spinning in Hertha’s committees on Wednesday evening!
What’s next?
► Windhorst and Hertha will use an appraiser to determine the value of the KGaA shares. The cheers who hope that Hertha can now get all the shares back for less money and do a great deal are wrong.
Firstly, Windhorst is the seller and selects the investor. However, Hertha has the right to consent before signing. But: If Hertha refuses to agree, Windhorst will certainly be very upset.
Hertha President Kay Bernstein flexed his muscles, investor Windhorst is now withdrawing Photo: picture alliance / nordphoto GmbH
Secondly, a Hertha brand that has fallen in value weakens the club’s creditworthiness. It’s bad when Hertha needs money from banks, for example, and has hardly any greater values than security.
► How long will the search for investors take?
Longing! There is still no buyer in sight. Reason: The current situation with inflation, war and Corona as well as the fact that the Windhorst Agreement would have to be adopted, which only contains limited influence on the co-determination of an investor.
Windhorst holds 64.7 percent of Hertha BSC GmbH & Co. KGaA, four seats on the supervisory board and one on the advisory board, but: He doesn’t have a majority anywhere, he can only agree. Decisions against Hertha are de facto not possible.
Despite the divorce, Windhorst and Tennor have a shareholder duty to continue attending meetings. It could get dirty here, for example if Tennor refuses to give consent or to discharge the supervisory board out of defiance.
► Throws Hertha Windhorst out of the club?
The Hertha committees would like to revoke his membership. For this, the association court would have to determine that the investor behaved in a way that was grossly damaging to the association.
Before that happens, Hertha’s lawyers examine the chances of success. The nightmare: Hertha fails with the application, Windhorst is the winner or remains a member of the club despite the divorce.
In order to prevent this, other Hertha lawyers are now to be used to investigate the espionage affair – Windhorst is said to have commissioned an Israeli detective agency to spy on and overthrow ex-boss Werner Gegenbauer (72).
It is this tremendous process that ultimately triggered the investor quake that led to a messy, long divorce.