According to Hofer, companies in the B&C group have faced “harsh winds with sometimes strong gusts” in recent years. Many events since 2020 have had a disruptive impact. “The golden age of globalization has ended,” Hoover said. One should not wait for a recovery to occur and postpone things to the future, but rather every strategy should be questioned. For B&C, this means “we are abandoning our decades-old doctrine that we should always maintain 50 plus 1 in core shareholding.” This applies to all three basic investments.

However, Hofer said there were “no considerations, intentions or plans” to change the stake in the company itself. “This wouldn't make any economic sense either.” B&C Group has a very mixed portfolio. “If I wanted to invest in a hybrid way, I would buy an index, but not shares in B&C.”

The three companies, especially AMAG and Lenzing, have to make investments that “cannot always be financed by companies.” Hoover said he prefers strategic partners who remain long-term investors rather than financial investors.

There is no specific number of shares that B&C Group intends to sell. However, the level of participation must be very high for the companies to be based in Austria, said Thomas Zempfer, Managing Director of the B&C Group and member of the AMAG Supervisory Board. “Then you're somewhere in the 25-plus range.”

Hofer said there are no concrete discussions yet, but AMAG, Semperit and Lenzing are interesting companies and have received “an endless number of calls and requests for discussions” over the years. “We are now increasingly accepting of the discussions that have begun.” Interested parties will be offered the benefits of the partnership. “We will then evaluate this demonstration phase – but we are not further along.”