GERMAN FIRMS have, like their country itself, a reputation for being staid. Look closer, though, and many brim with intrigue. Albert Darboven, a coffee tycoon, pushed his own son Arthur out of JJ Darboven and tried to adopt a friend as his heir and successor. The five children from the first marriage of Rudolf-August Oetker, grandson of the eponymous founder of a pudding dynasty, and the three offspring from his third have been at each other’s throats for years. The feud among the billionaire scions of the Tengelmann retail empire led to speculation that Karl-Erivan Haub, the group’s fifth-generation CEO, faked his own death in
→ Continue reading at The Economist
