Klaus-Michael Kühne was at times the richest German and, through his company Kühne + Nagel, benefited enormously from the high logistics prices during the corona-related supply chain delays. In a recent interview he gave insights into his investment strategies.
• Kühne: Billionaire holds large shares in some German stock exchange companies
• Kühne considers AI stocks to be “too technologically sophisticated” and prefers to buy pharmaceutical stocks
• Kühne complains about the takeover of CS – but considers UBS to be “extremely strong”
Klaus-Michael Kühne recently had to give up the position of richest German to LIDL founder Hans Schwarz, but according to Forbes information he still owns an impressive sum of more than 30 billion US dollars. Kühne is well-known in the German investment landscape, as the Hamburg native not only has a majority stake in the logistics group Kühne + Nagel, which is listed on the Swiss stock exchange, and of which he became a liable partner in 1963. In fact, the 86-year-old also owns considerable shares in other German companies. Kühne now holds 30 percent of the shares in Hapag Lloyd and 17.5 percent in the German airline Lufthansa.
Kühne also recently expanded his shares in DAX member Brenntag; The billionaire now holds at least ten percent of the shares in the chemical company and has not ruled out further purchases of Brenntag shares. Kühne also recently announced a billion-dollar investment in Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA), the operator of the Port of Hamburg, in order to prevent HHLA’s planned deal with the shipping company MSC. However, his plan was unsuccessful and the city of Hamburg rejected Kühne for the time being.
Kühne avoids AI stocks – and instead wants to strike in the pharmaceutical sector
The lion’s share of Kühne’s assets is mainly in German company shares, whereas the Hamburg entrepreneur, who now lives in the Swiss canton of Schwyz, does not invest significant sums in either foreign shares or tech companies. In a recently published “FAZ” interview, Kühne also emphasized his caution against the tech stocks that have recently performed strongly, such as NVIDIA or Microsoft. He does not want to invest in the area of artificial intelligence because it is “too technologically demanding” for him. Kühne admitted that he was not particularly familiar with this sector, which is why he could not assess the future prospects of companies operating in the AI sector.
Instead, Kühne is interested in equity investments in the medical, pharmaceutical and chemical sectors. The logistics mogul continues to see good prospects here, as evidenced not least by his acquisitions from the chemicals retailer Brenntag. By means of various new investments in the pharmaceutical and chemical sectors – and not in the AI sector – Kühne wants to diversify his holding’s portfolio, which continues to be strongly dominated by logistics and transport companies.
Kühne criticizes CS takeover by UBS
As part of the FAZ interview, Kühne also commented on the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse (CS) by its former rival UBS. The billionaire is dissatisfied with the “squandering” of CS and has therefore complained to UBS about the supposedly cheap takeover. He himself lost assets of around 1.25 million francs due to the collapse of CS. Due to the collapse of the CS, people have become more attentive to the “stability of the banks”. Nevertheless, he does not expect any major turbulence for the Swiss banking sector in the future – on the contrary: “Now there is only one major bank, UBS, and it is extremely strong,” says Kühne.
Kühne, however, assesses the current German economic performance as less severe, but at the same time emphasizes that Kühne + Nagel, as an internationally operating logistics group, is suffering less from the local economic downturn than many other German companies.
Editorial team finanzen.net
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