Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts
Saturday 15 November 2014
German league president says UEFA could leave FIFA
German Football League President Reinhard Rauball says UEFA would have to consider leaving FIFA if world football's governing body does not publish in full American attorney Michael Garcia's report into bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
Rauball tells Kicker magazine that he also wants FIFA to divulge what wasn't evaluated in Garcia's report and "whether it was justified to leave these things out. That has to be made public. It's the only way FIFA can restore some of its lost credibility."
Rauball was responding to German judge Joachim Eckert's ruling that exonerated Russia and Qatar of any corruption in their winning bids to host the World Cup in 2018 and 2022, respectively — a ruling that was harshly contested by Garcia.
AP
Friday 24 October 2014
America Movil says not in talks over T-Mobile US
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Germany's Monthly Manager Magazin on Thursday said America Movil was a possible buyer of the company, citing people familiar with Deutsche Telekom.
Deutsche Telekom owns close to 67 percent of T-Mobile US.
Reuters
Saturday 18 October 2014
Philippine militants free 2 kidnapped Germans
(AP) — Two Germans freed after being held for six months in the southern Philippines by a militant group that threatened to behead one of them if ransom was not paid were flown to Manila on Saturday under the care of their embassy, a Philippine military spokesman said.
Following their release Friday, Stefan Okonek and Henrike Dielen were flown to Manila under arrangements made by the German Embassy, said Maj. Gen. Domingo Tutaan. The two have not spoken publicly about their ordeal and German diplomats could not be reached for comment.
Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin confirmed their released late Friday, just hours after the Abu Sayyaf militant group had threatened to behead Okonek.
Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Rami told radio station DXRZ in southern Zamboanga City that his group received 250 million pesos ($5.6 million) in ransom. He did not say who paid it.
Gazmin said he was "not privy" to information about any ransom payment, though other Philippine officials confirmed that ransom had been paid.
"We're happy they're safe. I hope there will be no more (kidnappings)," Gazmin told The Associated Press by phone.
The German Foreign Ministry thanked the Philippine government for its "close and trustful cooperation," but did not give details on how the release came about.
Herminio Coloma, a spokesman for Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, said officials were still trying to piece together details of the release. He said there was "no change in the 'no ransom' policy of the government."
"With the release from captivity of the two German nationals, our security forces will continue efforts to stem the tide of criminality perpetrated by bandit elements," Coloma said in a statement.
Tutaan said Okonek and Dielen were brought by a Philippine navy ship to southern Zamboanga City after their release and spent the night at a military hospital there.
Military officials and government agents monitoring the hostage crisis, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the amount of ransom that was paid ranged from 50 million pesos to 240 million pesos ($112,000 to $5.4 million).
One of the officials said that Okonek appeared to have been beaten up by his captors because he had a black eye. In a video earlier released by the Abu Sayyaf, he was shown being roughed up and slapped.
Abu Sayyaf gunmen seized Okonek and Dielen from a yacht in April between Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo Island and the western Philippine province of Palawan. They were taken by boat to predominantly Muslim Sulu province, about 950 kilometers (590 miles) south of Manila, where militants are holding other hostages.
Abu Rami had threatened to behead Okonek at 3 p.m. Friday, but extended the deadline for the ransom payment. The group also had demanded the withdrawal of German support for the U.S.-led air strikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
In a call to the Zamboanga radio station, Rami said Okonek and Dielen were released around 8:45 p.m. Friday to a negotiator in a village in Patikul township on Jolo Island, an Abu Sayyaf stronghold.
"The 250 million pesos arrived, no more, no less," he said.
In an interview with DXRZ allowed by the militants earlier in the week, Okonek, 71, who said he was a medical doctor, appealed to "please do everything to get us out of here."
"I hope you will negotiate my release and so with my wife," he said, addressing no one in particular.
He said he was speaking from inside a 5-meter by 3-meter (15-foot by 10-foot) "grave" the gunmen have dug for him in the jungle. He said he and Dielen were separated by the militants about a day before.
Military chief of staff Gen. Gregorio Catapang said the Abu Sayyaf is still holding more than a dozen other Filipino and foreign hostages, including two European birdwatchers who were kidnapped two years ago.
The kidnappings dramatize the threats still posed by the Abu Sayyaf despite more than a decade of U.S.-backed Philippine military offensives that has crippled the group. Their ransom kidnappings have alarmed nearby countries like Malaysia.
In 2000, Abu Sayyaf gunmen snatched 21 European tourists, including three Germans, and Malaysian and Filipino workers from Malaysia's Sipadan diving resort and brought them to Sulu, where they eventually were freed in exchange for large ransom payments.
Tuesday 30 September 2014
Mueller’s penalty brings Bayern victory in Moscow
(Reuters) - Bayern Munich carved out a 1-0 win at CSKA Moscow on Tuesday thanks to Thomas Mueller's first-half penalty in the strangely muted atmosphere of a cold, damp and deserted Khimki Arena.
The Group E match was played in front of an empty house after a ban from European soccer's governing body UEFA was imposed for the racist behaviour of CSKA's fans.
The lack of atmosphere only made life more comfortable for the five-time champions as they dominated proceedings on the way to their second straight victory in this year's competition.
The German champions could have scored several against the injury-hit hosts but CSKA put up a spirited performance and could look back with dismay on their own missed opportunities.
CSKA's Finland midfielder Roman Eremenko even hit the bar in the first half with one curling effort but the decisive moment proved to be Mueller's 21st minute spot-kick.
After Germany team mate Mario Goetze was fouled in the area by Mario Fernandes, Mueller notched his 22nd career goal in Europe's elite competition with his expertly-taken strike. Goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev had conceded in his last 22 Champions League matches, dating back to 2006, and his unwanted record continued as he picked the ball gloomily out of the net.
BLAZED OVER
Goetze could have put the Bundesliga leaders ahead after nine minutes but Germany's World Cup final match-winner blazed a right-footed effort over the bar from close range.
When CSKA slowly began to find their rhythm, the quick feet of Ahmed Musa caused problems for the visitors' defence. The diminutive Nigerian forward managed to get free of Bayern's Mehdi Benatia and home in on goal but was foiled by Manuel Neuer's excellent save. The ball broke kindly for Zoran Tosic, who had time and space to manoeuvre the ball on to his favoured left foot, but the Serbian international ballooned the ball over the bar from an excellent position. CSKA were left to rue a number of missed chances in the first half but Bayern shut down the game expertly after the break, controlling the threat of CSKA substitute Seydou Doumbia and hardly giving the hosts a sniff of an equaliser.
It was Bayern who came closest to scoring again, with Goetze curling an effort just wide, but manager Pep Guardiola could at least be satisfied to see his side leading Group E with a maximum six points before AS Roma sought to match them with a victory at Manchester City in one of Tuesday's later games.
CSKA have still to earn a point but their performance was a vast improvement on their 5-1 trouncing in Rome a fortnight earlier.
Monday 29 September 2014
Adidas fights to draw top talent to headquarters in sleepy Bavarian town
(Reuters) - Adidas needs world-class designers, brand experts and technical whizzkids to improve its image against U.S. rival Nike, but persuading them to move to its headquarters in rural Germany is difficult.
Adidas has been losing market share to the world's biggest sportswear brand Nike, which is seen as far cooler in consumer surveys and is based near the hip U.S. city of Portland, Oregon.
Adidas acknowledges it is hard to recruit at its headquarters near the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, particularly for design, marketing and digital roles, and admits it missed trends in the U.S. market, where Under Armour has just overtaken it as No. 2 behind Nike. Nike's better than expected earnings on Sept. 25 underscored its ascendancy.
Adidas is responding by locating some key design roles in the United States at the same time as investing heavily in new facilities at its home base near the historic Bavarian town where Adidas was founded by shoe maker Adi Dassler in 1949.
"We need a lot of that top talent that is cutting edge. Ideally, they are working in the tech industry, in marketing organisations or are coming from top competitors. We need an environment that appeals to them," said Steve Fogarty, who is responsible for employer branding and digital recruiting
"Designers tend to gravitate to very large, international cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, London and it is a bit harder to convince them to move to the centre of Germany."
Eric Liedtke, the American who took over as Adidas head of global brands in March, has promoted Paul Gaudio to the role of global creative director and moved him from Herzo to the firm's U.S. base in Portland in a bid to turn around its fortunes in the world's biggest market for sporting goods. Close to 1,000 Adidas staff are based in Portland, compared with Nike's 8,500-strong workforce in the area.
Gaudio announced on Wednesday that Adidas will open a small creative studio in New York's Brooklyn district in 2015 to be led by three young footwear designers he has poached from Nike with a mission to explore design direction for the brand.
That will complement existing creative centres in Shanghai, Tokyo and Rio, but the vast majority of the company's hundreds of designers for football, outdoor, Originals fashion, training and running products remain based in Herzo.
Adidas shares are down more than a third this year, most recently suffering from a third profit warning in a year in July that the firm blamed in part on a disappointing performance in North America, particularly from its golf business.
Adidas trades at 17 times expected earnings, at a discount to Nike's 22.5 times and fast-growing Under Armour's 58 times.
Despite the new designers in the United States, long-serving Adidas Chief Executive Herbert Hainer, himself a native of Bavaria, remains committed to the company's base in a region proud of its strong economy and companies including BMW, Siemens, Audi, Munich Re and Allianz. [ID:nL6N0Q62GU]
About 3,900 of the total Adidas staff of 52,500 work in and around Herzo, about a third of them from outside Germany, and Hainer said last month the company planned to add 100-150 new staff at its headquarters every year.
GLOBAL FOOTWEAR HUB
While Bavaria has a reputation for beer festivals, lederhosen and conservative politics, Nike's home town of Portland is a city of 600,000 that prides itself on its liberal values and environmental awareness, as well as a proliferation of trendy eateries and microbreweries.
Based on a campus in Beaverton, seven miles (11 km) outside Portland, Nike's location in the American northwest also raised questions in its early days in the 1960s, with founder and Oregon native Phil Knight saying everybody originally thought it should be located in New England or the South.
But Portland has since become a magnet for the global footwear industry, helped by the relatively short hop to Asian production hubs and a youthful talent pool, prompting Adidas to move its North America headquarters there from New Jersey in 1993, and drawing U.S. brands like Columbia Sportwear and Keen.
Herzo, by contrast, is a town of just 24,000 people set in rolling fields, though many Adidas staff commute from the nearby university town of Erlangen or the city of Nuremberg, known for its walled old town, gingerbread and sausages but not for the most vibrant nightlife or fashion scene.
Nuremberg has an airport with direct flights to many cities in Europe but not further afield and there is no train link to Herzo from Nuremberg or Erlangen, meaning most staff have to commute by car.
Herzo's biggest employer is family-owned Schaeffler, which has 9,000 staff in the town, mostly in technical roles producing precision products for the auto and aerospace industry. It is also home to rival sportswear firm Puma.
Conscious that it was not the best location for a big global consumer brand, Adidas considered leaving Herzo in the 1990s when the company was trying to rebuild its fortunes after flirting with bankruptcy following the death of founder Dassler in 1978 and then his son Horst in 1987.
But when the departure of U.S. troops from Germany at the end of the Cold War freed up the military base outside Herzo, local authorities persuaded Adidas to stay. It moved its headquarters to the base in 1998 from an overcrowded office in downtown Herzo and has been expanding the campus ever since.
SAFE BUT DULL
Herzogenaurach mayor German Hacker said surveys showed that foreign inhabitants particularly value the high quality of life and security that the town offers.
"Herzogenaurach is a sheltered and manageable town. That is its charm, but you can get to big towns in 10-15 minutes if you want," he said.
One former employee, who declined to be named because they still work on a contract basis for Adidas, said they left the company because they found living in Bavaria too boring. "It is so odd that this company is in the middle of farmland. It doesn't have anything to do with style," the person said.
Adidas recruiting expert Fogarty, who spent three years working in Herzo but moved back to Portland last year, says the vast majority of staff describe working in Germany as an amazing experience once they arrive.
He set up a website to extol the virtues of Herzo, featuring employees from around the world praising the rural running tracks near the office, local beer festivals and the proximity to Alpine ski slopes. (herzo.adidas-group.com/)
Fogarty, who often has to get up at the crack of dawn in Portland to speak to colleagues nine hours ahead in Herzo, said Adidas does not lose staff due to the location of its base as it is flexible about where people work.
"While our headquarters is technically in Herzo, the opportunity to work in many locations is already here, so why invest in moving the headquarters?" he said.
However, the experience of Puma, founded by Adi Dassler's brother Rudolf after the two split a joint business, shows the pitfalls of dispersing key staff.
Puma had based its product management and design team for its lifestyle range in London to be closer to fashion trends, but decided last year to move the division to Herzo as it sought to centralise functions as part of a restructuring programme.
Puma is in the process of trying to reaffirm its sporting roots after sales tumbled in recent years. Puma had lost its reputation for sports performance gear by moving too far into the fashion business. [ID:nL6N0Q41GK]
Despite investing in fashion brands like NEO and Originals, Adidas has so far stayed true to its sporting heritage.
Adidas recently announced plans to build two new buildings - with a capacity for 3,600 staff - at its "World of Sports" campus outside Herzo and is about to open a 16-metre-high climbing wall in the grounds.
The Adidas campus already features sports fields and stylish buildings including a futuristic low-rise "brand centre" clad in black glass that opened in 2006 and a marketing and operations office called "Laces" that opened in 2011 and features criss-crossing walkways above a light-filled atrium.
"You can work in a dull office in the middle of Munich or an awesome office two hours north of Munich," said Christian Dzieia, Adidas director of property development.
An on-site fitness centre with daily yoga and aerobics classes opened last year as well as a bilingual kindergarten for 110 children and a campus canteen revamped with input from German celebrity chef Holger Stromberg.
"We're hiring a lot of people with a huge passion for sport whose eyes light up when they walk around the campus," said Fogarty.
"You have the best of both worlds, where you can walk onto this international campus with a lot of high-tech facilities and then go have lunch in a thousand-year-old Bavarian village."
Thursday 25 September 2014
Philippine Islamist militants threaten to kill German captives
The United States and its Arab allies bombed Islamic State targets inside Syria for the first time on Tuesday. The Sunni Muslim group has seized swathes of territory in civil war-torn Syria and Iraq, slaughtering prisoners and ordering Shi'ites and non-Muslims to convert or die.
Germany has ruled out taking part in air strikes, but did break a post-World War Two taboo on sending weapons to active conflict zones by agreeing to arm Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq.
A Philippine military intelligence source said he was aware of the threats to the German hostages from Abu Sayyaf, but doubted they would be carried out, predicting that the group would most likely negotiate a lower ransom.
"We take all threats seriously," he said. "But, based on our experience in dealing with this group, they are plain criminals who are only interested in getting money. They will eventually settle for a smaller 'board and lodging fee'."
According to media reports, the two Germans, a man and a woman, were seized at gunpoint from a yacht between Malaysian Borneo and the southern Philippines in April.
Abu Sayyaf has been blamed for beheadings, bombings and kidnappings for ransom. The group is also holding a Dutch, a Swiss, a Japanese and some Filipinos in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic state.
In 2001, Abu Sayyaf rebels in the southern island province of Basilan beheaded an American who had been taken captive from an island resort in Palawan province. Two other Americans were held for more than a year, and one was killed during a rescue operation. The other survived with minor wounds.
About 200 U.S. special forces troops have been deployed in the southern Philippines since 2002 to help train and advise local soldiers in fighting Islamist extremists.
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