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The important sentence in the article is:

" I own a few companies which means I'd be hit by the German exit tax. "

We don't know how many companies does he own.

We can look into exit tax rate, in different countries:

Germany: effective tax rate of up to roughly 28.5%

Japan: CGT rate is 20.315%

Israel: Standard CGT rate is 25%

Austria: Standard CGT rate is 27.5%

The tax rate is one thing, but the way your companies are valued before multiplying that valuation with the tax rate is another thing.

Germany values your companies at 13.75 * earnings by default.

If you prefer to provide an alternate valuation, you're looking at valuation costs of at minimum 10k€ per company (Wirtschaftsprüfer).