Am 03.01.2012 14:34, schrieb Recliner:
Am 03.01.2012 10:43, schrieb Neil Williams:
Have you ever looked up "nationalised" in a dictionary?

Tell me more about your ideas how trading shares at the stock
exchange changes the nature of a company, switching it from "real
commercial" to the opposite.

Who appoints the directors and senior managers in DB, and sets the
objectives, etc?

This is all well regulated in the law on Aktiengesellschaften (common
stock companies would that be in English, I presume).

So it is the "Aufsichtsrat" (advisory board?)

http://www.deutschebahn.com/site/bahn/en/group/ataglance/supervisory__board/supervisory__board.html
who recruits the CEO and other members of the "Vorstand" (board of
management).
members
http://www.deutschebahn.com/site/bahn/en/group/ataglance/board__managers/board__managers.html

Quoted from the first link above describing the supervisory board:

"Ten members are elected by the shareholders' General Meeting. Ten
members are elected by the employees. The Federal Republic of Germany,
as long as it is the majority shareholder, has the right to appoint
three members to the Supervisory Board."

So the shareholder has three out of 20 votes in the supervisory board.

Presuming it's the government, it's the government
that controls the company.

Only in a very very very indirect way. The federal government always
refuses to interfere in the commercial operatiosn of the company.

Just a few days ago, the govenment refused to interfere with the real
estate sales of DB AG, as the parliamentary group of the Partei Die
Linke had demanded.

There is, though, a yearly "Finanzierungs- und Leistungsvereinbarung"
between Deutsche Bahn AG and the federal governmant, which fixes what
performance the government expects from DB, and the subsidies it gives
for the network (track maintenance and new builds, not for rolling stock
and operations).


Cheers,
L.W.