Word: goergen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With Fritz-Aurel Goergen, the boss of West Germany's Henschel Works, awaiting trial on charges that he cheated the government in a $16 million tank deal, businessmen have been wondering what would happen to the vast heavy-equipment firm he made one of Germany's most profitable. Last week Essen's Rheinische Stahlwerke ended the speculation by making a bid to purchase Henschel, a move that would catapult the enlarged firm to third place among Germany's coal and steel giants (after Thyssen and Krupp...
Rheinstahl sells steel to Henschel, whose production of heavy trucks complements Rheinstahl's lighter line. Most important, Henschel is at a crossroads where it needs both larger injections of cash and a new guiding light to replace the ailing Goergen. Fritz-Aurel Goergen would be delighted to sell out to Rheinstahl, and in fact began merger talks with Rheinstahl Boss Werner Sohngen more than a year ago, but he owns only 53.9% of the stock. Most of the rest is in the hands of such U.S. investors as Morgan Guaranty Trust, Wall Street's Burnham & Co. and Financier...
...result of a number of sensational investigative arrests, has a reform movement been started. Half a dozen ranking executives of West Germany's big Henschel Werke (locomotives, trucks, land movers) have been jailed on suspicion of defrauding the West German Defense Ministry, including President Fritz-Aurel Goergen, who was hauled away from a banquet honoring Chancellor Ludwig Erhard (TIME, May 8). Germany's biggest clothing manufacturer, Alfons Muller-Wipperfurth, was grabbed from a hospital bed and jailed on suspicion of tax evasion. In 1962, after Germany's saucy newsmagazine Der Spiegel questioned West Germany's military...
Loss of Honor. Working twelve-hour days, short, blunt-mannered Fritz-Aurel rebuilt the giant, expanded into industrial machinery and helicopters, sold 44% of his stock to such U.S. investors as Morgan Guaranty Trust and Yale University when German bankers refused to finance further expansion. Goergen lived like the entrepreneur he was. His suburban Düsseldorf villa, ransacked by police for evidence, is filled with rich rugs, works of art and salons the size of tennis courts...
Germans found it hard to imagine that a magnate of Goergen's stripe could be involved in fraud, especially since defense contracts represent only 15% of Henschel's business. "It would hardly seem worthwhile for a company as large and important as Henschel to cheat for such a minor sum," said a Bonn corporate lawyer. Many Germans were jarred, too, by the blunt manner of Goergen's arrest and imprisonment, especially since no charge was filed against him. The uneasiness about how he was being treated was heightened last week when he suffered a heart attack...