Krupp Without Teeth

For half a century, West Germany's Demag Corp. has hustled the world over, selling steel mills and mining machines, bridges and boilers, cranes and canal diggers. In the process, Demag has grown into Europe's biggest manufacturer of heavy machinery. Last year Demag's sales in 97 countries totaled $250 million, and one-third of the world's rolled steel is now churned out by Demag-made mills. In ironic tribute to the company's size--and the fact that it has never made weapons--Germans call it "Krupp without teeth."

Chiefly responsible for Demag's growth has been bald, bespectacled Hans Reuter, 67. whose father launched the firm with a 1910 merger of three small Rhineland machinery makers. Last week, after 22 years as general manager of Demag, Reuter stepped up to chairman, to devote his time to such pet projects as Demag's atomic research program. To replace himself as operating boss, Reuter named burly Engineer Heinrich Miller. 62.

The difference may be hard to tell. Ruhr-born Miller joined Demag in 1927, five years after Hans Reuter went to work there, and rose from compressor salesman to head engineer. For the past two decades, he and Reuter have worked together 14 hours a day, automating Demag's production lines, planning new products, and maneuvering salesmen around the globe to outbid competitors. A slow-spoken technocrat, Miller is alleged by his plaintive subordinates to start his work day "shortly after midnight," i.e., 7:30 a.m.

To mark the shift in command, Hans Reuter delivered a valedictory to his stockholders (who include 30% of the company's employees) from the flower-decked stage of a movie theater in Demag's sleepy home town of Duisburg. Characteristically, Reuter called for more growth and more mergers--both on the part of his own company and Common Market industry as a whole. Said he: "Larger combines are necessary. If the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. have steel combines which produce 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 tons annually, we in Europe cannot be satisfied with works of a capacity of only 2,000,000 tons a year." Standing by to equip Reuter's proposed new European combines: Demag, of course.

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