But this was not enough to recover the bar

Klaus Kleinfeld is a busy man. Last month, the boss of Siemens announced two major decisions for the German conglomerate: the creation of a joint venture with Nokia in telecommunications networks and the acquisition for the activity of Bayer diagnostics EUR 4.2 billion. With the first, he closed the thorny dossier Com, the pole of communication difficulties. With the second, he offered an additional perspective to the lucrative pole of medical equipment.

For the twelve divisions of the group, the message cannot be clearer: you achieve your goals of margin of here in the spring of 2007, as Klaus Kleinfeld has promised in April 2005 his program "Tif4 More", four months after his inauguration, either you get out of the perimeter of the enterprise. The logic is relentless, the effects are immediate. "We are in the mode of implementation of the", welcomed the patron of forty-eight years, which has linked its future to these objectives.

Klaus Kleinfeld reflects this new generation of young German patterns, marked by a foreign experience significant it has restated its US subsidiary and broken to globalization and the "shareholder value". A small club where found by Michael Diekmann, the President of the Executive Board of the insurer Allianz, Dieter Zetsche, the DaimlerChrysler boss, or even his former colleague Wolfgang Bernhard, become responsible for the Volkswagen brand.

They do are not reminiscent of the generation of managers in the U.S. in the 1990s, personified by Klaus Esser at Mannesmann, Thomas Minister in Bertelsmann or Ron Sommer in Deutsche Telekom. Pillars of the new economy, they have left a memory mixed and disappeared from the traffic with the bursting of the bubble. But the newcomers, who all share a strong foreign experience (including us), arrived at a different time, the restructuring of the years 2000. The first attempted to build empires, the latter are the household.

Representative of this new Germany from the crisis, they have no complexes of their elders. Their communication is direct Klaus Kleinfeld is known internally to send mail permanently to his staff and their ambition is without limit: Michael Diekmann vows to catch up with the world leader in the sector, the AIG American. In addition, they openly show their visceral aversion to compromise and their respect for traditions is limited. It is this market like: where their predecessors have been reluctant to cut to the heart, they did not hesitate.

Witness, transferring its division of telecommunications the largest of the group, with a turnover of 13 billion euros , Klaus Kleinfeld to Nokia gets rid of something bulky attention and an outbreak of chronic losses that had no chance to reach its goal of margin in 2007. But it is also employed 60,000 and turns back to the roots of the Munich giant, born with the invention of the Telegraph by Werner von Siemens in 1847. Because, even if the company is still common, as those he created with Bosch appliances or Fujitsu in it, is not German to commands.

A few months after surrender (loss) of the activities of the Taiwanese BenQ Mobile terminals, skeptics fear that Siemens is simply unable to clean itself up its activities. In reality, the group tried a lot of solutions before separate from Com, including a social plan comprising the removal of 20,000 positions. But this was not enough to recover the bar. As division, very advanced in mobile networks, long ignored trends background as the voice over Internet Protocol, while its rivals the package on this technology.

Welcomed by the markets with a leap of action of 6 the day of its announcement in June, the operation has nevertheless heckled minds. The IG Metall Union and the Committee of the Group spoke of "serious misconduct" and "the most brutal rupture in the history of the House Siemens". In addition to the historic hyphenation, the proposed merger, which will give rise to the number three in the sector behind Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson Marconi, provides for suppression of 9,000 additional jobs.

They also criticise the form and management criticized the lack of debate and the speed with which the Supervisory Board, in which they are represented, had to decide. As in Allianz, but also in DaimlerChrysler where some decisions were made despite the rejection or the failure of the staff representatives , the culture of consensus is in trouble.

Analysts and observers now wonder about the future of the other divisions fragile beginning with that of computer services (SBS). In its current form, it has no chance to achieve its objectives of margin. If this Coca Light fana wants to maintain the credibility he has won the markets, he has interest to act quickly. A reorganization is planned for October.

To give a logic to the conglomerate and respond to critics who denounce the lack of clarity in its strategy, the boss puts forward his vision of "mega-trends", such as demographic changes, urbanization and environmental pressure. From this analysis it has defined three priority areas: energy and the environment, private and public infrastructure and health. Even to il is still "high tech", profile of Siemens is decidedly more industrial and closer to that of its competitor General Electric.

Remains a fundamental issue for Siemens: that of its cockpit. It is even more critical since the departure in March last the influential financial Director, Heinz-Joachim Neubürger. So far, the tradition was a President of the powerful Executive Board, but operated in pairs with an independent financial director countervailing. But the newcomer Joe Kaeser, goes to a faithful ally of Klaus Kleinfeld, unlike its predecessor, which was rather a rival.

While the employees feel muzzled, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Heinrich von Pierer, plays a decisive role. So far, the former boss has always supported his successor. Him who wanted to change the group in two or three years and who has known his consecration after 10 years only has always regretted for not acting more quickly and more radically. "I underestimated the forces of inertia", was assigned to the "echoes" in 2004. Impatient, his Colt fell in the Panel, but rather the opposite risk.