 During the end of the 1950s, Friedrich Karl Flick, who was a board member of the supervisory board before the war, started to monopolise the company to the detriment of the minority shareholders, sometimes by brutal means.Supported by the Bremen speculator Hermann Krages and partly due to the collusive trading of actions with the Feldmühle AG of which Flick was also a shareholder, he managed to obtain the majority of the shares of the company and became the president of the board of directors.As from then, Flick who already possessed 82% of the share capital, made use of the controversial "Umwandlungssteuergesetzes" (fiscal law regarding commercial companies) in order to squeeze out the minority shareholders of the company, in exchange of a compensation (this tool is comparable to the one used today in order to exclude minority shareholders out of a company).