In the following guest post, Peter C. Fischer and Burkhard Fassbach explore the reasons why board members of German companies would be well-advised to negotiate a clause in their service agreements requiring their companies to procure D&O insurance, as well as the preferred terms and provisions that the D&O insurance should incorporate. Peter is a Professor of Law at the University of Applied Sciences Dusseldorf and Burkhard is a D&O lawyer in private practice in Germany. A version of this article in German previously was published in the law journal GWR. I would like to thank Burkhard and Peter for allowing me to publish their article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this site’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is the authors’ article.Continue Reading Guest Post: The German D&O Procurement Clause Revisited
Volkswagen, several former executives –including Martin Winterkorn, the former Chair of the company’s Board of Management– and the company’s D&O insurers have reached an agreement to settle damages claims the company asserted against the executives relating to the company’s “Dieselgate” scandal. In March 2021, following a years-long investigation of the scandal by an outside law firm, the company filed the claims, in which the executives were alleged to have breached their duties to the company. The settlement, worth in the aggregate approximately $351 million in U.S. dollar terms, includes substantial payments both by the individual executives and by the company’s D&O insurers. The D&O insurers’ contribution reflects a separate settlement between the company and its insurers with respect to insurance coverage issues. A copy of VW’s June 9, 2021 press release describing the settlement can be found