The Bavarian Cooperative’s President, Stefan Müller, is championing the new restructuring concept for the struggling BayWa Group in discussions with creditors, asserting that the alternative would have been a total disaster. Owners and banks have fundamentally agreed on a new rescue package, which includes a potential debt haircut and an additional capital injection from the cooperative majority owners. Final approval from all creditors is now required.
Müller estimates the existing damage to the cooperative sector across Germany and Austria to be significantly less than one billion euros. To date, the cooperative owners have already committed approximately 550 million euros through capital increases and other interventions. However, he cautioned that if the company’s shares eventually had to be completely written off-which remains possible given the unpredictable future-that billion-euro threshold could be reached.
Beyond the financial restructuring, Müller is pushing hard for the rapid appointment of a CEO, a position that has been vacant for months. He believes BayWa needs to refocus on its core areas-agro trade, agricultural technology, and construction materials-and requires a leader who can drive the core business forward rather than merely managing the cleanup.
On the matter of performance, Müller attributes the failures to management errors that occurred during the debt-financed expansion into renewable energies. Whether the Supervisory Board also failed in its duties is currently under investigation.
