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| Innogy and Dietmar Kuhnt of RWE: after a shaky |
It was hardly an auspicious start to a relationship between a German company and its UK target. When executives of UK energy group Innogy arrived at Heathrow airport to meet their counterparts from the German utilities firm RWE they found they'd been assigned a meeting room named after World War II RAF fighter-pilot hero Douglas Bader.
It could have been an ice-breaker but did the executives see the joke? "Er, not really," confesses one of the bankers involved in the transaction. What made matters worse was that high winds delayed the aircraft carrying RWE CEO Dietmar Kuhnt from Germany, leaving Innogy CEO Brian Count and his team waiting for several hours.
For Count, it must have been an uncomfortable wait.