TheChek News Flow

Berlin

An epidemic of burnout is taking a toll on a wide swath of employees in Germany, despite the fact workers here labor fewer hours a year than people in any other developed country.

The development has raised concerns among some public-health officials, corporate chiefs and others. It also has entered the public discourse to a rarely seen degree, in a society normally loath to talk openly about mental-health issues.

A survey from Gallup, the polling organization, earlier this year found that as many as 4.1 million German workers, out of a workforce estimated at about 40 million, have experienced mental or emotional distress. The Techniker Krankenkasse, a public health-insurance fund, said this spring that the people it insures were missing more than 15 days of work a year on average—the most since the fund began keeping records. “Lifestyle diseases” including burnout “are on the rise,” said fund chief executive Jens Baas.

Some companies have taken steps to control workers’ stress levels. Car maker Daimler AG allows employees to have emails arriving during vacation deleted automatically. Other companies are permitting dogs in the workplace to help employees de-stress. And the topic has entered the cultural arena with “BurnOut, das Musical” opening in Berlin this season.

“People take themselves more seriously now. They believe that to have value, you need to be in the middle of everything,” said Sabine Haydn, who wrote the musical. “People forgot how to say, now is the end of the day.”

Many believe overwork isn’t the main reason behind the affliction, which Germans routinely refer to as das Burnout. Instead, a stress study by Techniker Krankenkasse and interviews with a number of workers suggest burnout stems from crushing hierarchies and unrealistic expectations in the workplace, and scant praise or recognition from bosses.

“A big part of burnout has to do with bad management” that doesn’t help employees avoid factors that can lead to excessive stress, said Bastian Bretthauer, a counselor at the Fürstenberg Institute, which consults with companies on health issues, including burnout.

Employees interviewed about their experiences with burnout declined to allow their full names to be used, saying they feared it would lead to social ostracism and hurt their careers. A marketing executive with a major international company talked of breaking down in tears in his office. A mechanic with a lifetime contract at a manufacturing company lost his friends and girlfriend and described sitting at home at night thinking about how he can no longer function. And a nurse who has worked for decades in a Berlin hospital, where her contributions have gone unrecognized, became overwhelmed by routine noise on her bike ride home.

Germans work fewer hours a year than people in any other member nation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including 100 hours less a year than the French, the group’s data show. A 35-hour workweek is standard in Germany’s manufacturing sector. By law, Germans get at least four weeks of vacation a year, and parents take up to 14 months of paid leave to care for babies. Employees also can get up to 72 weeks of extended sick leave at about 70% of their salary.

Some experts see Germany’s culture of hard work—even if it no longer translates to actual work hours—as a culprit behind burnout.

“The Prussian Protestant work ethic is extremely dominant here,” said Mazda Adli, a top stress doctor in Germany, referring to the term coined by German sociologist Max Weber more than a century ago. “You’re a good citizen when you work a lot. And then you have a well-deserved, good illness when you suffer from burnout,” said Dr. Adli, who is director of the mood disorders research group at Charité, Berlin’s largest public hospital, and leads a private clinic for managing stress.

Markus Beyer, 53, a former manager for a German marketing company, says he quit his job after watching many of his employees succumb to burnout. He started a new career as a dog trainer in Berlin and launched the Office Dog Association, a nonprofit that has signed up more than 200 companies to allow dogs in the workplace. Among them are lawyers’ offices, insurance companies, a piano manufacturer and a town hall, he said.

“In Germany, you live to work,” said Mr. Beyer. “We have lots of wealth and lots of power, but what’s the price?”

Car maker Daimler’s Mail on Holiday program, when employees turn it on, automatically deletes emails arriving during vacation. It “allows our workforce to better unplug during vacations and breaks,” said company Medical Director Helmut Schmidt. “In times of personal crisis, our employees can contact our social counseling office,” Dr. Schmidt added.

Volkswagen AG, another car maker, blocks emails after office hours and releases them to workers’ inboxes the next workday. The company “respects relaxation time and will only breach the downtime after the workday finishes in emergencies,” a spokesman said.

Some say Germans are simply prone to stress. “It’s typically German to worry a lot, and to always think about everything that can go wrong,” said Ms. Haydn, the writer of “BurnOut, das Musical.”

Ms. Haydn, who studied script-writing at University of California, Los Angeles, says she finished writing the book and lyrics while on maternity leave from a marketing company, where she saw burnout affecting her colleagues. She raised €50,000, equal to about $56,000, in donations to fund the project.

The musical tracks a character named Ben, a worker at an advertising firm and a father-to-be. He spirals into burnout because of mounting pressure from demands at work and from his pregnant wife. At the end of the show, Ben decides to lead a “self-determined life” as a writer.

After the production’s sold-out opening in Berlin in April, one audience member wrote online, “It’s the most German work I’ve seen in a long time.”

FRANKFURT—Several Volkswagen AG investors on Monday called for an independent investigation of the car maker’s management and supervisory board in connection with the company’s emissions-cheating scandal, setting the stage for a showdown with management at a crucial shareholder meeting next month.

Germany’s largest investor association, DSW; Hermes Investment Management, a London-based fund with £24 billion ($34.67 billion) under management; and Deminor, a Brussels-based company that advises institutional investors, are calling for a special independent audit to investigate Volkswagen’s management and supervisory board for “potential breaches of duty” in connection with the emissions scandal.

Volkswagen hired the U.S. law firm Jones Day last year to conduct an internal investigation to determine who was responsible for rigging diesel engines on nearly 11 million vehicles to cheat on emissions tests, one of the biggest incidents of corporate fraud to hit the automotive industry. Investors seeking an independent investigation said Jones Day’s mandate is too narrow.

“We believe the Jones Day investigation is not independent,” Edouard Fremault, a partner at Deminor, said. “They are only looking at the management board. We want them to look at the supervisory board as well, so the scope of an independent investigation will be larger than the Jones Day investigation.”

Mr. Fremault said Deminor represented Volkswagen investors that include the City of New York’s pension funds and Swedish pension fund Andra AP-fonden. SdK, the German association representing retail investors, also backs the motion.

Hans-Christoph Hirt, co-head of the Hermes Equity Ownership Services fund, said in a letter to Volkswagen that the executive board failed to monitor lower-level management and informed the market too late about the emissions scandal.

He said that the supervisory board lacked independence and that executive compensation for 2015 probably violated German stock corporation law.

“We believe the management board has failed to ensure compliance with laws and regulations,” Mr. Hirt said, adding that the supervisory board lacked a sufficient number of independent directors. “This may have contributed to the apparent deficiencies in its monitoring of the management board.”

Shareholders likely represent enough shares to put the motion on the agenda at the annual general meeting in Hannover on June 22, but they will need the backing of Volkswagen’s core shareholders for it to pass. If the motion fails, investors can appeal in a German court, which can overrule the general meeting.

Three big shareholders—the heirs to Beetle designer Ferdinand Porsche, the state of Lower Saxony and the Qatar sovereign-wealth fund—own about 92% of Volkswagen’s voting capital. These three shareholders hold nine seats on the 20-member supervisory board, while labor representatives hold 10 seats, leaving one independent director, Annika Falkengren, CEO of Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AG.

The three big shareholders in September backed Volkswagen’s decision to have Jones Day conduct an internal investigation. However, Volkswagen management and not Jones Day has the last word on publication of the results of that investigation, which is expected to be concluded by the end of the year.

A Volkswagen spokesman declined to comment on the shareholder allegations.

A spokesman for Porsche Automobil Holding SE, the Porsche-Piech family fund that holds 52% of Volkswagen’s voting stock, and the state of Lower Saxony also declined to comment. Qatar wasn’t immediately available for comment.

The move to force Volkswagen to launch an independent investigation into the Dieselgate scandal comes on the heels of growing shareholder activism.

Hundreds of Volkswagen shareholders including major investment funds such as Calpers, the California public employees retirement fund, and Norway’s sovereign-wealth fund have are seeking damages for losses suffered when the emissions fraud became public in September.

Chris Hohn, the activist investor who founded the Children’s Investment Fund, or TCI, wrote a scathing public letter to Volkswagen earlier this month, prompting the auto maker to pledge to overhaul the way it compensated top management.

Volkswagen said last month that it had set aside €8 billion ($9 billion) to repurchase tainted diesel-powered cars and around €7 billion more for potential legal claims, penalties and compensation. DSW said an independent investigation was needed to clarify whether those provisions were sufficient and to make sure that controls and checks have been put in place to prevent further scandals.

“That’s something that shareholders would certainly prefer to have established by an independent investigator rather than Volkswagen itself,” DSW President Ulrich Hocker said.

GE to Invest $1.4 Billion in Saudi Arabia

U.S. conglomerate teams up with Saudi state-owned oil firm Aramco and others to open up economy

DUBAI—General Electric Co. on Monday announced a raft of investments worth at least $1.4 billion in Saudi Arabia as the Persian Gulf kingdom seeks to reduce its oil dependence by further opening up its economy to international businesses.

The Connecticut-based conglomerate said it was teaming up with two partners, including Saudi state-owned oil giant Aramco, to build a $400 million manufacturing facility for the energy and marine sector that is expected to create 2,000 new jobs in the kingdom.

GE also signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly invest $1 billion in several sectors such as water and aviation by 2017, alongside a Saudi entity comprising the country’s biggest petrochemicals company, its public investment fund and Aramco. GE said also it would consider an additional $2 billion worth of investments in the same sectors after 2017.

“The joint investment and collaboration will be a game changer for the kingdom’s industrial and digital sectors,” said GE Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt, who was meeting with ministers and business leaders in the coastal city of Jeddah on Monday.

GE’s investments come at a time when the Saudi government is trying to completely overhaul the country’s oil-dependent economy after the collapse in crude prices. The economy is straddled with a bloated public sector and is predominantly fueled by oil revenue.

As part of its new economic strategy, Saudi Arabia is trying to attract more international investors and their know-how to help create jobs for its growing population, while also trying to boost sectors that don’t rely on the country’s oil wealth. It also envisages a greater role for the private sector to provide jobs for Saudi citizens.

“This strategic alliance with GE is an ideal fit to deliver on these goals, and together we will contribute to the long-term economic competitiveness and diversified growth of the Saudi economy,” said Abdullatif Al-Othman, chairman of SAIIC, the entity with which GE is planning the investments.

GE already employs around 2,000 people in Saudi Arabia as it has three offices and seven facilities there. The company also has the world’s largest gas turbine service facility in Dammam. It was opened in 2011.

STOCKHOLM—Spotify AB nearly doubled its revenue in 2015, but losses grew amid continued investment in international expansion.

In a legal filing by its Luxembourg-based parent company, Spotify Technology SA, Spotify said Monday it had revenue of €1.95 billion last year, up 81% from €1.08 billion in 2014.

The Swedish online music-streaming company reported a net loss of €173.1 million, up 6.7% from €162.3 million last year.

Spotify said royalty payments to record labels and artists increased sharply last year. The company said it paid €1.63 billion in royalties, distribution and other costs for the year, up from €882.5 million in 2014.

Of its revenue, €1.74 billion came from paid subscriptions, up from €978.6 million last year. It nearly doubled its advertising revenue from €95.8 million to €195.8 million.

Launched in 2006, Spotify is approaching 100 million users, according to people familiar with the matter, of which 30 million have a paid subscription.

Deere & Company (NYSE:DE), the Moline, Illinois-based provider of equipment and financial services to John Deere dealers and distributors, has the ability to move on M&A opportunities with its solid balance sheet position, CFO Rajesh Kalathur said Friday.

On the 2Q16 earnings call, the CFO was asked for an update on Deere’s capital allocation priorities and if there were any good deals in the market. Kalathur said the company’s cash plans had not changed, with its A rating of greatest importance followed by strategic options.

“With respect to strategic growth options, you’ve seen us keep organic R&D spend at a pretty healthy rate and you’ve also seen us announce some inorganic acquisitions,” the CFO said.

He noted transactions with Precision Planting, Monosem, and Hagie Manufacturing as examples of recent deals.

“In this type of an industry environment where we have a very strong financial position, some of these inorganic options become more actionable for us,” Kalathur continued. “And if they are in the long-term interests of our shareholders for profitable growth in the long-term, we will act on some of those.”

The CFO said dividends were the next priority, followed by share repurchases.

Deere’s operating segments consist of agriculture and turf, construction and forestry, and financial services. The company’s equipment operations manufacture and distribute agricultural equipment, commercial and consumer equipment, as well as equipment for construction and forestry. Deere’s financial services primarily provides credit services largely to finance sales and leases of equipment by John Deere dealers and trade receivables purchased from the equipment operations.

The company announced in late March it had entered into a joint venture with Hagie, a provider of high-clearance sprayers. As part of the agreement, Deere acquired majority ownership of Clarion, Iowa-based Hagie.

Deere said November 2015 it would buy the equipment business of Precision Planting for an undisclosed sum. The asset was purchased from The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON).

Earlier that month, Deere signed an agreement to acquire Monosem, a France-based provider of precision planters. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Deere has typically handled advisory matters in-house for its more recent domestic buys, according to the Mergermarket M&A database. Bird & Bird was used for the Monosem deal.

Advisors used on earlier acquisitions include JPMorgan, Torch Partners Corporate Finance and Merrill Lynch on the financial side, while Morrison & Foerster, Cokinos, Bosien & Young and Skadden Arps have been used for legal in the past decade.

Citi, BofAML, DLA Piper and Shearman & Sterling have advised on the sell side in the past few years

Lyft’s insane fare cuts will make you think twice about Uber

Lyft is spending big again in New York City to beat back Uber.

The ride-hailing app is slashing fares for passengers by 50 percent for all hours between Monday and Friday — and is letting drivers keep 100 percent of the tab.

The exceptionally sweet deals are being offered for a “limited time” and “could last several weeks,” Vipul Patel, Lyft’s general manager for New York City, told The Post.

The discounts are stepped-up versions of what Lyft has offered in the past as it spends heavily — to the tune of $50 million a month nationwide, according to sources — to gain market share against its bigger rival. A Lyft spokeswoman said the new incentives fall “well within” the startup’s existing budget.

“When we bring people on board, they tend to stick around,” Patel said, adding that Lyft’s New York business has surged tenfold over the past 12 months.

Still, Uber’s Big Apple business is more than seven times as large as Lyft’s, according to Slice Intelligence.

Lyft has offered zero-commission driver deals since January, but has required drivers — whom Lyft usually charges a cut of 20 to 25 percent — to rack up 75 rides in a week to win them.

“It’s been a really successful program,” Patel said. “We thought we’d give all drivers a taste of that.”

Eyeing summer hotspots, Lyft also said it’s launching in the Hamptons, Cape Cod and the Jersey Shore in the coming weeks.