A European giant's Achilles heel

摘要

Klaus Kleinfeld's honeymoon as the new boss of Siemens is over. After almost 100 days at the helm of one of Europe's biggest conglomerates, the man who was praised as the "wonder boy" of German business is now expected to act resolutely to tackle the problems of the company's ailing mobile-phone division. His opportunity came at the presentation of the company's latest quarterly results on April 27th, when Mr Kleinfeld said Siemens may give up control of the handset business. But even this did little for the confidence of investors, and the value of Siemens's shares ended the day down.