Eighty Subsidiaries One Holding Umbrella

“Under the umbrella of the holding company, the brands Dywidag, Züblin, and Heilit+Woerner Bau GmbH are maintained alongside the group’s main brand, Strabag – the latter had come to Strabag with Walter Bau. However, the entire company network consists of more than 80 subsidiaries – from A like Abfall Behandlung Recycling GmbH to Z like Züblin Umwelttechnik GmbH. At first glance, this may seem confusing, but in the world of large corporations, it is entirely common for numerous brands to gather under the umbrella of a holding company. For example, the Dutch-British consumer goods corporation Unilever operates with 40 brands: from Axe, Becel, or Coral, via Lätta, Lipton, and Lux, to Thea, Timotei, and Unox. The largest European automotive group, Volkswagen, has ten other brands alongside its main brand VW, from Audi, Bentley, and Bugatti, through Scania, Seat, and Skoda, to Porsche.”

“The split corporation with the Austrian Bau Holding and the German Strabag was merely an interim step for Haselsteiner. His long-term goal was to create a unified construction group of European dimensions. This group should not only handle the actual construction business, including planning, but also capture the profits of suppliers, such as the cement industry, and downstream areas, like real estate management. There was a whole series of acquisitions, mergers, spin-offs, restructurings, and new formations. Even Haselsteiner is unlikely to remember the exact number—external observers found it hard to keep track. Below are only the largest and most spectacular acquisitions listed—detailing every single expansion step of Bau Holding and Strabag, which later became Strabag SE, would exceed the scope of this book.”