MUNICH, Germany (AFP) - "Make money, but not at any price!" Shareholders of the German industrial giant Siemens were impressed Thursday by strong profits but called for an end to corruption within the group.
"We want to make money, but not at any price," small shareholder representative Harald Petersen of the association SdK exclaimed during a Siemens general assembly in the Bavarian capital.
Before almost 10,000 investors, Daniela Bergdolt, from the DSW group of small investors, judged that "the reputation built by Siemens for 160 years has been reduced to ashes."
Albrecht Kinkelin, a 64-year-old investor from Munich, told AFP however that "corruption in the economy is not exceptional," and estimated that "the group's image is certainly damaged, but not forever."
All the same, he felt Siemens ought to have "acted more frankly."
The sprawling industrial group has been battling for more than a year since successive revelations of corruption began to tarnish its hard-won image.
"It is not satisfactory that the affair has not been wrapped up after more than a year," complained Hans Hirt, who represented the British pension fund Hermes.
Siemens has uncovered at least 1.3 billion euros (1.9 billion dollars) in dubious transactions in its accounts, mostly undisclosed payments to obtain international contracts.
The group is under investigation in several countries, has lost its boss and spent 1.6 billion euros already in the form of fines and fees for an internal probe.
That figure could explode if Siemens is hit by sanctions from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The German group lists shares in the United States, and might have to pay up to four billion euros there, according to some German press reports.
Talks with US authorities, from the SEC and the Department of Justice, are to begin next month and last several months for a "case without precedent," in the terms of Siemens supervisory board president Gerhard Cromme.
Cromme is now facing sharp criticism from shareholders, along with his right-hand man, Deutsche Bank chairman Josef Ackermann.
"Sirs, we must really begin from scratch, and I will not vote to renew your mandate," said Bergdolt of the DSW association.
But the family of company founder Werner von Siemens, which holds six percent of the company's equity, has taken the rare step of issuing a statement in support of Siemens' management and supervisors.
Meanwhile, the investment fund DWS congratulated the supervisory board for the "new start" represented by its nomination seven months ago of Peter Loescher as chief executive.
He is the first Siemen's boss to be recruited from outside the company.
Loescher has shaken up the management board, launched a hunt for staff tainted by corruption, and simplified the structure of a group present in 190 countries that turns out products from lightbulbs to trains and electric power stations.
Above all, he presented brilliant quarterly results.
Net profit in the first quarter of the group's 2007-2008 fiscal year, which began on October 1, leapt from 788 million euros to 6.5 billion owing to the sale of an automotive parts division, VDO.
Order books are full as well, and Loescher said he was not worried by a possible recession in the United States, where Siemens is the biggest German company by sales.
For investors there was good news in the form of a share buyback plan worth two billion euros in the next few months.
For now, "alleged corruption and proven misconduct," in the words of Cromme, have not hurt the company's finances.
That could change however if the SEC slaps Siemens with heavy fines or excludes it from US public tenders.
Or if, as the pragmatic analyst Frank Rothauge of Sal Oppenheim noted on the news magazine Spiegel's website, the group's new ethical standards prevent it from obtaining contracts.
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