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Klaus Josef Lutz in February 2023: Leadership crisis at BayWa

Photo: Heinz Weissfuss / Zeppo / IMAGO

The agricultural trading group BayWa surprisingly loses its chairman of the supervisory board.

The company announced that Klaus Josef Lutz had resigned from his position with immediate effect.

Lutz took up his post at the head of the supervisory board last summer and would have been appointed until the 2028 general meeting, as stated on BayWa's website.

He was head of the company from 2008 to 2023 and handed over leadership to Marcus Pöllinger in the spring of last year.

BayWa had previously announced that the supervisory board discussed the allegation of a suspected compliance violation in detail at a meeting on Friday.

As a result, the committee “expressed its full confidence in CEO Pöllinger,” it is said.

BayWa did not initially disclose the nature of the alleged violation of the rules of good corporate governance.

Pöllinger has been head of the SDax group for nine months.

He has been working for BayWa since 2008, has been a member of the board since 2018 and succeeded Klaus Josef Lutz in April last year.

From agricultural trade to renewable energies

Under Lutz's aegis, BayWa, which was once largely limited to agricultural trading, had grown significantly; in addition to agricultural and building materials trading, the renewable energy business is now a focus.

Lutz is President of the Bavarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

Lutz said in an interview with SPIEGEL last spring that he had learned the most from a mistake during his time at Burda Publishing in the 1990s.

At that time he had to lay off employees and rescinded the dismissal of a man after his father, who also worked at Burda, stood up for his son.

“Afterwards I felt really good at first,” said Lutz in an interview with SPIEGEL.

»But after some thought I said to myself: What an idiot you are.

As soon as suffering gets a face and sits in front of you, you soften.”

(Read the entire conversation here, in which Lutz railed against the Greens and reported a near-death experience.)

BayWa employs almost 25,000 people and generated sales of 27 billion euros and a profit of 240 million euros last year.

BayWa's main shareholders are Raiffeisen companies.

BayWa's share price came under slight pressure following the afternoon's news.

kko/dpa