Investors made big profits when Vodafone bought the company for 154 billion euros (US$196 billion).
Ackermann asserts that chipping off a 30 million euro golden handshake for retiring Mannesmann chief executive Klaus Esser was, if anything, too modest. Shareholders richer, boss happy, end of story.
ADMIRED INSTITUTIONS
That is not how many Germans remember the demise of Mannes-mann, admired as one of their finest business institutions.
Early in the 1990s, Mannesmann devised a daring plan: to build a phone network from scratch, challenging state-owned monopoly Deutsche Telekom.
Among its cleverest moves was to buy a half-share in the wires that run alongside railways as the backbone of its network.
It sold millions of mobile phones, and gradually disinvested from smokestack industries like metal manufacturing.
Then along came Vodafone with a huge takeover offer. Esser fought back.
Full-page advertisements said an independent Mannesmann was bound for greater things. Esser became a German hero.
On Feb. 3, 2000, Esser caved in.
A day later, the Mannesmann board authorized the huge bonus.
Prosecutor Johannes Puls told the court Wednesday that the bonus was in fact offered to Esser three days before Mannesmann's surrender.
A key issue before judge Brigitte Koppenhoefer, 52, is likely to be why.
The trial resumes Wednesday.
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