Since ＤａｉｍｌｅｒＣｈｒｙｓｌｅｒ announced its fourth quarter results would be 1.2 billion dollars loss, the talks about the most responsible for the loss were going on at both side of Atlantic. The Business Week magazine issued on December 11, 2000 reported that Mr. Jurgen Shrempp, Chairman and CEO of DaimlerChrysler, got approval on all his important actions from Mr. Hilmar Kopper, Chairman of Supervisory Committee Board of the Deutche Bank and the biggest German shareholder of the company, holding twelve percent of shares. He presided over the Supervisory Committee of DaimlerChrysler as its chairman and have had the power of reorganization of top executives of the company. Mr. Edzart Reuter, a former chairman of Benz, was expelled by him. The merger of Chrysler and Benz and a buy out of Mitsubishi Motor were done under his understanding (editor: or his supervision.)

In short, Mr. Kopper is much more responsible than Mr. Shrempp for DaimlerChrysler's stock price fall to a half of the high price a year ago.

The Wall Street Journal of today reported Mr. Robert Eaton, the then chairman of Chrysler, gave up the future of Chrysler and he succeeded in drawing the naive top of the Deutsche Bank and the artless hot-blooded man of Benz into the merger of two companies. At that time his company was getting profits as some of their products were sold well. Mr. Eaton and his fellow top executives were said to walk off with nine digit booty. They were deceived by Mr. Eaton.

A friend of mine acted as an in-between of the two company negotiation (his behind the scene move was written in"Taken for A Ride"by Bill Vlastic and Bradely A. Stertz, published by William Morrow in 2000). I had an impression from his talks to me that Mr. Kopper himself attended secret meetings held at a suburban of Detroit. The material that merger would bring profits to both companies was prepared by the other friend of mine, I presumed.

Even though they made efforts to find who was the most responsible, the history was gone forever. Mr. Dieter Zetsche, a Shrempp's right hand man, is now working on the restoration plan of the company. Let's wait for his plan until February, next year when it is time limit of renewal plan.

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