Gent speaks up for Mannesmann rival

FORMER Vodafone chief Sir Christopher Gent today spoke up for his former rival, Mannesmann boss Klaus Esser, telling a German court that multi-million-pound bonus payments had nothing to do with smoothing through one of the world's largest takeovers.

Esser and five other members of the Mannesmann supervisory board, including Deutsche Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann, are on trial accused of breaching shareholder trust in awarding huge bonuses after the £110bn takeover of Mannesmann by Vodafone in 2000.

'The deal was decided by the international capital markets and not by the compensation payments, which were never a condition-of the deal,' Gent said. 'Klaus Esser never once bemoaned his own position when he had lost, and his company and the part he would play in it were what mattered, not compensation.

'During the bid by Vodafone, I grew to like and respect him as a man who fought with great honour for the independence of his company and I am sorry that he has been subject to so much unjustified suspicion and scrutiny.'

Gent said Vodafone had long regarded Mannesmann as a takeover target and would have preferred an agreed deal. Mannesmann initially resisted the deal but eventually struck an agreement.

The Vodafone chief, who built the company into the world's largest mobile phone firm through a series of spectacular global deals, described how he had gradually turned the screw on Esser to secure a deal.

After a meeting in November 1999 when Esser dismissed a friendly bid, Gent said: 'I told him that it was not his company, that it was his shareholders' and that he should ask them, or we would with or without his support.'

He described Esser as 'worthy opponent who had fought with great tenacity for the independence of his company and understandably for his own career', adding: 'He had created great wealth for his shareholders. When defeat finally stared him in the face, he made only a half-hearted attempt about his own career and never once asked for compensation or any other payments.'

Gent said Esser was desperate to remain as chief executive of the company and wanted to maintain top positions for his own executives.

He said he offered Esser only the role of non-executive joint deputy chairman 'because of everything that's gone on before'.

Gent also said that Germany's political elite, including Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, approached him, asking him to keep hold of Mannesmann's Atex engineering arm in Germany when Vodafone moved to sell it off.

The case continues.