Word: ostmeier
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...Hanns Ostmeier was stunned to pick up a popular German newspaper one recent Sunday and find a photo of himself along with several colleagues in a mock WANTED poster. Ostmeier's offense: he runs the German operations for the Blackstone Group, the big U.S. buyout firm. Blackstone isn't exactly a household name in Germany. But this spring, a top German politician named Franz Müntefering likened Blackstone and other private-equity groups to "swarms of locusts" that fall on companies and devour all they can before moving on. "Some financial investors don't waste any thoughts on the people...
...critique, just before a key state election that the SPD lost badly, sparked a furor and a nationwide debate about capitalism that continues to reverberate. Initially nervous, Ostmeier and managers at other major private-equity groups in Germany were silent. But these days, Ostmeier is speaking out in public, trying to convince his fellow Germans that private-equity investors are not villains but heroes who are good for the nation because they increase business efficiency. "Germany is now part of the global economy. It's essential to have that debate and come to grips with it," he says. "The part...
...fairness, the caricature of cigar-chomping Americans trampling over Europe seems misplaced. While some of the major U.S. investors have Americans on staff in Europe, their public face is usually local. "We are not showing up with a cowboy hat," says the principal of one U.S. fund. Ostmeier, for example, who is based in Hamburg, is German, a former management consultant with Boston Consulting Group in Düsseldorf. He spent seven years working for a London-based European private-equity group before he joined Blackstone in 2003. Jean-Pierre Millet, who runs Carlyle's European operations out of Paris...
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