FRANKFURT (Reuters) -German logistics entrepreneur Klaus-Michael Kuehne has increased his stake in Lufthansa to 15% from 10%, making him the biggest shareholder in the German flag carrier and pushing shares in the airline higher on Thursday. Logistics companies, which have benefited from surging profits from ocean shipping due to the COVID-19 pandemic, have increasingly invested in other forms of transport, such as air freight, to add resilience to global supply chains and protect against a downturn. Kuehne, an 85-year-old German billionaire, is the controlling shareholder of Swiss logistics firm Kuehne & Nagel and has a 30% stake in container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd AG.
Lufthansa staff have called on the German flag carrier to end its "cost-cutting craziness", accusing the airline of mismanagement and contributing to the recent chaos at airports by laying off too many workers. In a letter to the supervisory board seen by Reuters on Wednesday, staff representatives said there are too few employees to handle booming summer demand and they need to be given the right conditions to perform at their best. Chairman Karl-Ludwig Kley said in a message to employees that he was aware of employees' reports of aggression and in some cases even physical attacks by customers, "of despair and tears, of helplessness while remaining loyal to Lufthansa."
The carrier has filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S., saying a move by about 1,000 of its pilots to go on strike would worsen its already fraught finances.