Daimler Faces Lawsuit Over Schrempp

The first lawsuit has been filed against DaimlerChrysler by an investor who claims he was short-changed over the automaker's announcement that its chairman is stepping down at the end of the year, the plaintiff's lawyers said on Thursday. Munich-based lawyers Rotter Rechtsanwälte said in a statement that they had filed a suit with a court in Stuttgart alleging that the German-US auto giant failed to inform their client promptly about the decision by chief executive Juergen Schrempp to step down early. After Schrempp announced he was quitting, DaimlerChrysler shares soared by more than 10 percent on the stock exchange, boosting the company's market value by more than three billion euros ($3.7 billion). "According to our information, Schrempp's resignation was a done-deal at least five weeks before it was made public," the lawyers argued. "But this insider information was not published until July 28. Those shareholders who sold their shares before then could have got a much higher price for their shares if DaimlerChrysler had made the information public as soon as it was known," they said. In this concrete case, the lawyers' client had sold his shares in DaimlerChrysler just 90 minutes before Schrempp's decision to resign was made public, meaning he pocketed just 36.50 euros from the transaction, Rotter Rechtsanwälte said.