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1 days and 17 hours ago
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width="1" height="1" //divpFrank Asbeck knows how to attract publicity. There was the time
Germany's self-styled "Sun King" offered all the country's atomic engineers a job in his
solar-technology company if Germany turned its back on nuclear fuel. /ppThe colourful maverick, who
within 10 years has turned his Bonn-based SolarWorld into a multimillion euro concern and one of
the leading solar companies in the world, has now done it again with his offer to buy the German
car-maker Opel./ppThe 49-year-old son of a handyman who trained as an agricultural scientist
offered €1bn (£850m), "a serious offer", he said, expressing his wish to
turn Opel into Europe's "first green automotive group"./ppMinutes into the start of the working day
in the US, Opel's owners, a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/20/us-economy-cars"General Motors/a, flatly
refused Asbeck's offer yesterday, issuing the unambiguous statement "Opel is not for
sale"./ppAnalysts have been keen to point out that such an offer from a company with an annual
turnover of €700m to one with a turnover of €16bn, could have
been little more than a PR stunt. /ppOthers remarked that Asbeck, who recently announced plans to
build a large compound at one of his plants for a pride of Zimbabwean lions, is a complicated man
full of contradictions. Asbeck's penchant for fast sports cars is well-documented. "How can you
trust a man who pushes for energy change yet drives around in a gas-guzzling Maserati?" asked
Tilman Steffen of the Netzeitung. /ppThe suspicion that Asbeck's offer was not quite what it
seemed, deepened when a closer look at his proposal showed that he effectively wanted the company
for nothing, demanding a payment of €40,000 for each of Opel's 26,000 workers
— equivalent to the €1bn he is prepared to pay for it. /ppBut
it could be his remarks had just the effect he wanted. They got him on to the front of many
newspapers and ruffled the feathers of German industry, triggering a debate in a poignant week when
Opel went to the German government cap in hand looking for a €1.8bn bailout as
the car industry feels the squeeze./ppAsbeck said his aim is to transform Opel from a producer of
high-emission cars to one of more energy-efficient vehicles, including solar-powered cars, or what
he refers to as "sunmotive concept" vehicles./pp"The challenges of climate protection and of the
market require a transition from automotive to sunmotive concepts," he said./ppHis remarks are a
pointed critique of Germany's car industry which has been painfully slow to rise to the challenge
of producing more environmentally efficient vehicles. Many ask, due to the mistakes it has made,
why the car industry has any more right to a government handout than other firms. Asbeck says
crisis means opportunity and solar-powered cars might be just the boost the economy needs./ppHe
insists he is in a position to make the transition where the car industry has failed. His
stock-market registered company employs 2,250 photovoltaics experts and has been working on
producing a solar-powered car (the "sun mobil") for years, amassing prizes for its
efforts./ppSupporters of Asbeck said his ideas should not be dismissed./pp"He's as stubborn as a
mule," said Michael Vesper, former minister of North Rhine Westphalia where SolarWorld is based,
and a fellow Green party member. "When he wants something he sees it through," he said, pointing to
his track record./ppIn 1999 Asbeck used the proceeds from floating SolarWorld on the stock market
to buy the chemical giant Bayer's solar branch in Freiburg. By 2004 the shares had risen by 500%,
making them the most successful in the German market and two years ago Asbeck's influence spread
across the Atlantic when he bought the solar energy section of Shell. In October he opened his
first factory in the USA, in Oregon and made sure he was on hand to press the red button which
started the controls./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia
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La grosse colère d'Otto Pfister, le sélectionneur des Lions Indomptables du Cameroun
; la « vengeance » des dirigeants...
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