Drexel hands over management to Fritz Poppmeier at the turn of the year. It rules out the trading giant's IPO.
Drexel changes to the supervisory board
The turn of the year also brings a change in management at the retail giant Spar: After 20 years, long-term board member Gerhard Drexel (65) hands over the reins to Fritz Poppmeier (55), also a member of the founding families, and moves to the supervisory board. To say goodbye, Drexel gave the APA an interview. In it, he speaks out clearly against an IPO and announces that Spar will continue to comment on socio-political issues.
Fritz Poppmeier takes over in January
The Spar Austria Group is 93 percent owned by the local founding families Drexel, Poppmeier and Reisch and several other small Austrian shareholders, some of whom also belonged to the founding families or were added through later takeovers.
IPO “absolute taboo”
Drexel excludes an IPO with clear words: “We do not want to go public and will never go public. That is an absolute taboo for us,” said Drexel to the APA . “When you go public, you have a completely different focus than an entrepreneur. You focus on the development of the stock market price instead of meeting customer needs,” said the outgoing Spar CEO. “It was never an issue in the owner families, we were just often asked by external parties.”
In the past, the Spar boss has often spoken out critically on social and health issues, including environmental protection and free trade agreements. “That will certainly be continued, it is in our company DNA that we point out socio-political grievances. Probably only we in the food trade can do that because we have no corporate headquarters in Germany or America,” said Drexel.
Against glyphosate, for free trade
Among other things, Spar has publicly spoken out against genetic engineering in food, against glyphosate in agriculture, against palm oil and against too much sugar in food and beverages. “We also took the liberty of pointing out deficiencies in possible free trade agreements. I have often been misunderstood, I am not against free trade,” said the Spar boss. “Free trade has advantages and has brought a high level of prosperity overall.”
Drexel sees the environmental impact of free trade agreements too little. “But when the Amazon rainforest in Brazil is burned down on the altar of free trade, under the Mercosur Agreement, so that cattle farms and soy-growing areas are created, we no longer play along.”
On course for expansion
During Drexel's tenure, the Spar Group expanded rapidly with its supermarkets and Hervis sports stores at home and abroad and also became a large shopping center operator in Central and Southeastern Europe. Spar first opened supermarket branches in northern Italy, Slovenia and Hungary, followed by Croatia in the mid-2000s. Sales rose from 1.7 billion euros at the beginning of 1990 to an estimated 17 billion euros in 2020; the number of employees rose from 12,000 to 86,000 during this period.
Antitrust penalty
The Spar group suffered a setback in the legal dispute with the Federal Competition Authority (BWB). In 2015 and 2016, cartel fines totaling a little more than 40 million euros were due for vertical price agreements, i.e. those between suppliers and dealers. “We were deeply convinced that we had done nothing wrong in our behavior towards the suppliers,” said Drexel, looking back on the legal dispute. “We used the legal remedies, but did not win. That is to be accepted in a constitutional state. What is allowed and what is not allowed in dealing with suppliers was not clear up to this point.”
