How is it not the case in Germany?
The only German tech company I’m aware of was a fintech which was a massive fraud that collapsed on itself.
The only German tech company I’m aware of was a fintech which was a massive fraud that collapsed on itself.
Germany has a large "Mittelstand", so medium sized companies and much stronger antitrust/cartell-laws. One could argue, that the lack of extremly large tech-companies is, for better or worse, by design.
Wirecard was a disaster for a multitude of reasons: The company itself [lost|stole|defrauded] a billion euros, their auditors (Ernst&Young, now "EY") failed to notice a billion euros of irregularities and lost their auditing license over the debacle. The german banking authorities failed in some capacity I cannot remember right now.
First, they ignored early - like TEN YEARS - and relatively continuous warnings about fraud at Wirecard.
Then they legally targeted journalists who pointed out misconduct at Wirecard (!!!)
Then they banned short-sellers from shorting Wirecard (!!!!!!) and indeed in internal memos mentioned that short-sellers were Israelis and British citizens in some kind of bigoted justification for the ban. Gross and disgusting, but perhaps par for the course in some levels of the government there.
They tried to cover up malfeasance within their own org, including at least one, but probably more employees undertaking insider trades on Wirecard before its failure.
But don’t be too worried about the poor chauffeur-driven bureaucrats at BaFin!
They’ve since reorganised and added more senior employees to an already bloated and ineffectual regulator who are culturally in bed with the regulated entities.
The gravy train must continue.
(Just reviewing what happened through internet searches has caused steam to come out of my ears again. What the actual fuck was BaFin doing all those years?)
We also have our own fancy pants multi billion dollar delivery companies like "Delivery Hero/Lieferheld" or Zalando that Silicon Valley types are so fond of.
SoundCloud is a German startup. So is ResearchGate.
Or how about Hello fresh that so many English speaking YouTubers tend to have sponsorships with?
By the way I was mostly trying to think of Silicon Valley esque startups with a strong internet presence. The moment you talk about things like semiconductors, digital twins, robotics, basically any manufacturing related technology, Germany has a long list of major "tech" companies. I know, I know "tech" is actually American slang for software, not hardware, technology but still.
Do you have some opposing examples?
It doesn’t generally get included for the same reason IBM doesn’t typically get included in list of ‘tech companies’, even if they are one of the oldest actual tech companies.
Been around forever (70’s or earlier), large multinational, more about business integration and sales than any headline tech. Frankly, their tech has been a side thought for a very long time internally. It’s a blue chip that happens to involve tech, not a ‘tech company’ like any of the FAANGs. Same issue Tata/Wipro, etc. have IMO. Arguably Oracle falls in the same class too.
A parallel comment mentioned Deutsch Telecom, but they’re really not a ‘tech company’ anymore than T-Mobile, AT&T, Comcast, etc. are.
If we include it anyway, that gives Germany 2 and the US…. Several dozen? Minimum? Maybe 50ish, actually. Even if we don’t use the same broad criteria in the US.
If we use the same broad criteria in the US, probably 1/3 of the Fortune 500 qualify, if not more. Is Bank of America a ‘tech company’?
This fits Microsoft as well. Are they not in tech?
They always seemed a bit weird to me. Near as I can tell, they were first, bigger, and invented most of the tech at scale (well, kinda - porn companies were first I think?).
Also, without the N in the acronym it becomes a lot less cool sounding, and well, a lot more derogatory.
If you want examples that fit some specific definition of "tech company", please share that definition, or where one can look it up. I deliberately didn't bring up more examples than SAP, as I didn't want to get lost in the weeds.