Stock Market as Expansion ATM Then Exit

“At the beginning of 1990, Haselsteiner announced plans to tackle the market in the still-existing East Germany with five regional construction companies. He founded new German companies in Berlin, Dresden, Magdeburg, Rostock, and Schwerin, behind which, as he mischievously noted at the time, “by chance Austrian capital is standing.” He equipped each new East company with 100 million schillings (seven million euros) in initial capital. For the time, this was an enormous expansion of a domestic company into foreign markets. The company managed to raise the money at the Vienna Stock Exchange, where Bau Holding was listed from mid-September 1990. For his wife’s family, who had previously owned 40 percent of Bau Holding through the Carinthian Industrial Holding, the stock exchange listing was “a certain psychological problem,” Haselsteiner later admitted.”

“The big goal was clear: Hans Peter Haselsteiner wanted to make his Strabag the largest construction company in Europe. To achieve this, he couldn’t avoid gaining a foothold in the continent’s largest market: Russia. The conditions seemed ideal in 2006. The company received its new, modern structure, which should make it flexible and powerful. Haselsteiner wanted to raise the necessary funds for expansion in the East from the capital market. At the beginning of 2006, he announced that he wanted to return Strabag SE to the Vienna Stock Exchange, which he had left in 2003 with Bau Holding. In the medium term, his family and the Raiffeisen sector, as core shareholders, were to reduce their holdings from the current 100 percent to up to 40 percent: “We will commit to a minority role because that belongs to a modern stock market standard. Stock markets do not want a majority owner,” Haselsteiner had learned from Bau Holding’s unsuccessful stock market appearance. But: “We will continue to be core shareholders—for as long as I live or have something to say.” As a reminder: the shares of the German Strabag, which still existed, had always been traded on the stock exchanges in Frankfurt and Cologne.”

“Azcárraga’s main maneuver was to sell Radio Programas de México. His partner in the network, Clemente Serna Martínez, had been pressuring Azcárraga to define his stake. “Let me buy your share or I’ll sell you mine,” Serna went so far as to tell him. Since Don Emilio was investing most of his radio profits in TSM, and as many performers increasingly had to choose between working for radio or for television (with Azcárraga pressuring them to choose the latter), Serna was concerned about the evident conflict of interest. In 1961, Azcárraga completed the sale of his shares in RPM in favor of Serna and kept only a few stations, among them his beloved XEW and XEQ. As part of the deal, Serna ceded his stake in TSM’s stations in the provinces. Azcárraga owned shares in broadcasters outside RPM, and he sold most of these to his nephew Rogerio Azcárraga, who grouped these and others into the Organización Radio Fórmula.”

“The expansion of the television business undertaken by Don Emilio was not limited to Mexico. The same year he sold his stake in RPM he acquired a station in Texas, which would become the cornerstone of the Spanish International Network, the first and largest Spanish-language television network in the United States, today known as Univision.”