More and more German companies are using the conversion of their legal form into a European stock corporation (SE) to circumvent equal participation in supervisory boards and statutory quotas for women.
This is the result of a study by the Institute for Codetermination and Management (IMU) of the union-affiliated Hans Böckler Foundation.
The newspapers of the Funke media group reported about it first.
According to this, there are currently 424 German SE companies, including 107 with more than 2000 employees.
"Four out of five of these large SEs avoid equal participation in the supervisory board," says the study. “This currently affects more than 300,000 employees, and the trend has been rising for years.” If they were stock corporations under German law (AG), employees on the supervisory board could have an equal number of votes. This is currently the case for 211 German stock corporations with more than 2000 employees in Germany.
By expanding the Dax to 40 members, 14 SE groups are now represented in the most important stock market index.
But only four of them still have a supervisory board with equal representation: Allianz, BASF, E.ON and SAP.
"Most companies take the step to bypass codetermination on supervisory boards," IMU expert Sebastian Sick is quoted as saying.
"At the same time, you are ruling out the use of the quota for women on supervisory and executive boards."