SAP and Hasso Plattner
The boss who can’t leave
By Max Bourne
February 12, 2024, 3:34 p.m
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He wanted to leave five years ago, says 80-year-old SAP founder and chairman of the supervisory board Plattner. But they didn’t let him. Not even two years ago. The latest attempt to find a successor is also anything but smooth.
SAP’s success story lies, among other things, in the fact that the company continually reinvents itself. The most recent example: To the delight of its shareholders, the software company has just announced that it will cut thousands of existing jobs in order to instead invest more in the promising artificial intelligence. However, the group is having a hard time dealing with another upheaval: For years, SAP has been dealing with the previously announced and then postponed farewell to the long-time boss, chairman of the supervisory board and the last founder still active in the company: Hasso Plattner.
He had already tried to leave twice – five years ago and two years ago, Plattner told the “NZZ” two weeks ago on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Both times, however, “employee representatives and employees” asked him to continue. Because SAP has a “standard age limit” of 75 years for the supervisory board and a “standard length of service” of a maximum of 12 years, many shareholder representatives are critical of Plattner’s excessively long term of office. They have been calling for succession planning for Plattner for years, which was finally presented to them last year.
But the attempt to hand over his office at this year’s general meeting in May is obviously anything but smooth. This time Plattner had thoroughly prepared his successor. A year ago he presented what seemed to be the perfect candidate. “It is difficult to find a candidate with such a reputation and such knowledge of the market”; Plattner enthused about US manager Punit Renjen, the long-time head of the consulting group Deloitte. “I wouldn’t have known a better one,” said Plattner in an interview with “Handelsblatt” at the time. Renjen was then initially elected as a simple member of the SAP Supervisory Board in order to prepare the handover for May 2023.
The fact that SAP surprisingly announced that it had parted ways “amicably” months before Plattner’s preferred successor was even supposed to take up his position once again highlights the problem of generational change. Instead, the supervisory board is now proposing former Nokia boss Pekka Ala-Petilä as chairman of the committee.
Will Plattner continue as a consultant?
SAP cited different ideas about the future role of the chairman of the supervisory board as the reason for the abrupt swap of candidates. It was therefore not clear to the American Renjen that, according to German law, this largely consists of sensationalism and does not provide for active participation in day-to-day business. But according to reports, this is at most half the truth. Renjen, with his decades of international experience as a management consultant, will have known exactly what a German supervisory board does and doesn’t do.
On the other hand, Plattner himself is much more than just a supervisor. To this day, it shapes important personnel decisions and SAP’s product strategy. Plattner also plays the role of “chief software consultant”. He is still seen as an active, driving force in the company. Renjen also wanted to take on such an active role, but found himself in a power struggle with CEO Christian Klein, which the supervisory board, led by Plattner, decided in Klein’s favor.
There is still no clarity about future leadership at SAP. Plattner’s designated successor, Ala-Petilä, has been associated with the company for a long time. He was a member of the supervisory board from 2002 to 2021. He should initially only be re-elected to the committee for two years and then take over as chairman. Plattner himself has left a back door open so that he can’t leave completely, even at the age of 80: he is checking whether and in what form he can remain active as a consultant even after his departure as chairman of the supervisory board, he told the “NZZ”.