Vodafone culture still rankles
By Bertrand Benoit in Frankfurt
Published: June 4 2001 21:22GMT | Last Updated: June 5 2001 02:23GMT
The winter sun was already dimming on the afternoon of December 22 when Joachim Erwin, the mayor of Dusseldorf, pressed a button at a ceremony on the city's breezy riverside promenade.
As the mayor flicked the switch, a cloth wrapped around the top of the Mannesmann tower slowly unfurled, unveiling the bright red Vodafone sign replacing the illuminated logo that had graced the skyline since 1958.
Although 11 months had passed since Vodafone had sealed its E175bn (£104.4bn; $148.2bn) takeover of Mannesmann, not everyone reacted dispassionately to the disappearance of a symbol that had stood for one of Germany's most enduring and successful companies.
"A lot of people who were invited did not turn up because they felt doing this just before Christmas a clear lack of sensitivity," says Harald Treptow, the former head of Mannesmann's tax department.
It has now been exactly a year since Mannesmann's management formally handed power to Julian Horn-Smith, the Vodafone manager appointed by Chris Gent, chief executive, to head the group's European region.
Yet, while no one is calling the takeover a failure, Mr Treptow, who now heads his own tax advisory company, and other past employees are bitter about what they see as Vodafone's heavy-handed approach to integration.
"People were shocked at the speed with which Vodafone came and sold anything that could be turned into money," says Mr Treptow.
Among the first assets to go was Mannesmann's fine art collection. The paintings by Picasso, the expressionist watercolours by Emil Nolde and the sculptures by Basque artist Eduardo Chillida, which had been gracing the tower's top floor, all went under the hammer within weeks of the takeover.
So did the century-old wood panels in the board of directors' dining room.
"Some people now play football in the rooms," says one resident in the building.
A former Mannesmann lawyer, 15 years with the company, says: "The problem for Vodafone is that it has no history. It grew far too quickly to develop a tradition of its own, so it came and it could not offer a replacement culture."
A perceived crackdown on Mannesmann's social traditions - many of which fit the stereotype of the paternalistic German conglomerate - reinforced Vodafone's image, in the mind of some employees, as a ruthless capitalist machine.
Gone are the birthday cards and bottles of wine as well as the annual champagne Christmas gathering for retired executives. While Mannesmann had always handed money to charities anonymously, Vodafone thinks its contributions should be publicised.
Yet employees loyal to Vodafone deny any systematic clampdown on traditions.
After some reflection, for instance, the company "Kantine" has been maintained. And the chain-smoking 60-year-olds still run Mannesmann's reception desk despite persistent rumours that they will be replaced by younger members of staff.
The speed at which Vodafone stripped Mannesmann of the business assets it did not want was bound to unsettle many employees. Moreover, critics accuse Vodafone of breaking promises.
The disposal of Atecs, which Vodafone originally said would not be sold but listed on the stock exchange, and the decision to scrap the European board in Dusseldorf are particularly sore points.
At Vodafone Deutschland in Dusseldorf, the criticism is privately dismissed as the bitter expression of a vocal but small minority.
"There are 500 to 600 people who are very upset," says one employee.
Even the sceptics admit that employees of Mannesmann's mobile telephony operation - the real target of Vodafone's takeover - generally feel they have been treated fairly.
Christian Hoppe, head of Vodafone's press office for Germany, says there is no denying that Mannesmann has gone through a dramatic cultural revolution, but he points out that the refocusing on telecommunications 10 years ago was a far more radical change than Vodafone stepping in.
"So while there might have been a single and coherent Mannesmann culture once, it has kept transforming itself ... over the years."
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