ThyssenKrupp Holds Contentious Annual Meeting with Shareholders

ThyssenKrupp AG held its annual meeting Friday and was attended by thousands of shareholders who were angry at the past year’s failures and anxious to hear what solutions management could offer.

Supervisory Board Chairman Gerhard Cromme faced intense pressure from some shareholders to resign over the Steel Americas debacle but held his ground. “If you ask me whether we as a supervisory board could have done things better in the past, then my honest answer is ‘yes, we trusted too long, we could have acted sooner’,” he said. Cromme’s comments elicited both boos and cheers as he continued to shift primary blame for the Steel America losses to the Executive Board.