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Rheinmetall boss Armin Papperger during the defense company's balance sheet presentation in Düsseldorf
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Ina Fassbender / AFP
Top executives at German corporations are using the latest price records in the Dax to sell shares in their own companies at a profit - and thus finance private house purchases. Rheinmetall boss Armin Papperger, whose company gained a lot of stock market value as a result of the war in Ukraine, sold a good 10,000 Rheinmetall shares worth around 4.9 million euros this week. According to a spokesman, this is only a small part of the total 160,000 shares that Papperger holds. At the current stock market price, the Rheinmetall boss would still have shares worth a good 70 million euros in his portfolio. There shouldn't be any particular reason for the sale; rather, Papperger wants to use the money to buy real estate for his daughters. Last Friday, Claudia Nemat, a long-time member of Deutsche Telekom's board of directors, sold T shares worth a good 2.5 million euros.
The sales are unusual in that current members of the board of directors and supervisory board are actually encouraged to buy shares in order to express their commitment to the company. Telekom's board of directors is even obliged to invest part of the short-term bonuses in the group's shares. Some investors also follow the buying and selling decisions of top executives because they see them as an indication of the companies' future prospects. Telekom rejects this reading: “It was about buying a house and there was a deadline,” Nemat said through a spokesman.
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