TOP German businessmen, led by the heads of Porsche and BMW, yesterday mounted a revolt against an explosive new law that will force them to reveal their ample pay packets.

The draft law will put Germany in line with most other European countries, but it is regarded by many executives as tantamount to a declaration of open class warfare.

“This is bringing socialist ideology into the boardroom,” said Wendelin Wiedeking, the chief executive of Porsche. His earnings have been estimated at more than €15 million (£10 million) a year.

Certainly the timing of the law is politically motivated. Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor, wants to show ordinary Germans — forced to tighten their belts because of his tough welfare and labour reforms — that he retains a strong social democratic distaste for fat-cat management salaries.

A crucial regional election is looming in May in North Rhine-Westphalia, a former stronghold of working-class socialist voters. The Government’s original aim was voluntary disclosure by the bosses of the 1,000 companies quoted on the German stock exchange. Some — embarrassed by the Mannesmann trial, which exposed the large payoffs nodded through during the Vodafone merger — have come clean.

At the top of the list was Josef Ackermann, the Swiss-born chief executive of Deutsche Bank, whose salary had already been disclosed in the courtroom. He earns €11.1 million. The head of Siemens, Klaus Kleinfeld, admits to earning at least €3.3 million.

The Government has decided not to wait for more voluntary confessions and will press ahead with the law requiring disclosure. The point, it says, is to improve corporate governance. The political agenda, however, is plainly to mobilise voters.

“I think it’s completely wrong when people in the boardroom get wage rises while at the same time they are sacking people on the shop floor,” said Fritz Kuhn, the leading Green parliamentarian.

Many of the high-paid rebels are from the car industry. Jürgen Schrempp, the head of DaimlerChrysler, earns an estimated €9 million a year and is holding out against disclosure. So is his colleague at BMW, Helmut Panke. “We think this law is the wrong one,” a spokesman for BMW said. Other dissidents include the chief executive of the Axel Springer group Matthias Doepfner — although his newspapers have been in the forefront of demanding more candour from executives.

The current practice across German industry is to reveal only the total amount spent on paying the members of the board. “Shareholders do not receive any additional enlightenment if we say who gets what on the board,” Jürgen Hambrecht, chief of the chemicals group BASF, said.

German bosses argue privately that the danger of disclosing top salaries is that it breeds envy in the board itself and leads to pressure to pay everybody at the same high level. US salary disclosure has led to an inflationary effect on management wage packets, argues a paper by the German Confederation of Industry.

The Government is providing a loophole for the rebels. If 75 per cent of the annual general meeting agrees that salaries should stay secret, the chief executives need not bend to the law. That should keep Porsche salaries confidential but industry insiders say that DaimlerChrysler’s Herr Schrempp is likely to face pressure to come clean.

The Greens are unhappy with the opt-out clause. “The goal of disclosure is to inform society and not just a company’s shareholders,” said Volker Beck, the parliamentary leader of the Greens.

THE TOP FIVE

Bernd Pischetsrieder, VW: £1.8 million

Leading declared salaries in German business

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