Yes, hence me saying “failed”. They cooked the books because they wanted to put it up for sale on the stock market, but in the end that never happend for a lot of different reasons.
If I recall correctly the last serious attempt to privatise it was shortly before the 2008 financial crisis, so I guess you are almost correct with two decades. Time flies…
But they are organised as and run like a private company and driven purely by short term profits and will pay big time bonuses to their executives (usually ex polititians) every year.
Yes, the point I was trying to make was not that being owned by the state makes it work better: in fact I think it is absurd that it is a “for profit” company which has no incentive to make profit as it’s owner will never hold them accountable by letting them go bankrupt, as that is not an option. We have the worst of both worlds, almost as if public necessities (“Daseinsvorsorge”) and natural monopolies do not make sense to run “privately”…
There are no private investors. Its 100% owned by the state…
Yes, hence me saying “failed”. They cooked the books because they wanted to put it up for sale on the stock market, but in the end that never happend for a lot of different reasons.
They cooked the books, but not for potential investors. At least not in the last two decades.
If I recall correctly the last serious attempt to privatise it was shortly before the 2008 financial crisis, so I guess you are almost correct with two decades. Time flies…
But they are organised as and run like a private company and driven purely by short term profits and will pay big time bonuses to their executives (usually ex polititians) every year.
Yes, the point I was trying to make was not that being owned by the state makes it work better: in fact I think it is absurd that it is a “for profit” company which has no incentive to make profit as it’s owner will never hold them accountable by letting them go bankrupt, as that is not an option. We have the worst of both worlds, almost as if public necessities (“Daseinsvorsorge”) and natural monopolies do not make sense to run “privately”…