Altana plans jobs expansion

Nikolaus Schweickart, the ceo of pharmaceutical and special chemical manufacturer Altana, from Bad Homburg, is not the first German ceo to ring the New York Stock Exchange's (NYSE) opening bell on the Bell Platform above the trading floor. Altana is the seventeenth German company to venture to trade on the NYSE.

In the next two years, Altana plans to create around 1,000 additional jobs in the United States. To date, the company has 1,000 employees in the US. One of the reasons for Altana wanting to trade on the NYSE is that in addition to a higher profile on an important market, the company wants to create acquisition currency through a listing on the US stock exchange. Companies are also no longer able to acquire or keep top-class employees at their American subsidiaries if they cannot offer stock options.

Altana, which is represented on the German M-DAX for medium-sized companies, is also planning to participate in American biotechnology companies using the currency share to strengthen its own research. Through the IPO, Schweickart intends to increase the share of American stockholders from 10% at present to 15% in the coming years. The share of institutional investors such as investment funds should also be increased from the current 25%. The majority share (50.1%) of Susanne Klatten will remain untouched in the process. She is the daughter of the late Herbert Quandt, the former head of the Varta conglomerate, from which Altana has arisen.