Good returns attract investors:
the city council acquires a stake
Duesseldorf city council kept a watchful eye on the flourishing business development at the Rheinbahn. Ten years after it was established, the council sought ways of participating in this successful enterprise. With the assistance of special-purpose fund that it established, the "Fund for the Participation of the City of Duesseldorf in Commercial Enterprises", it acquired Rheinbahn shares in the nominal value of 5 million marks in 1907, which enabled it to decisively influence the company’s further development.
The city council occupied five of a total of ten seats on the supervisory board and extended its influence by way of increasing its stake in subsequent years. It even used newspaper announcements to encourage small shareholders to sell their shares to the city council.
In 1906, the first Rheinbahn Director, Mayer a.D. Haumann, left the company. He was replaced by the directors Schwab and Faber. In the years to follow, the Rheinbahn’s business operations boomed under Director Schwab.
Schwab soon became accustomed to the initially unfamiliar field of technology. When he first took up office, he handled the company’s major property deals, and was able to persuade significant companies to establish factories on the Hansaallee land, which the company planned to develop into an industrial estate. Obviously, it was not easy to provide companies such as the Gebr. Boehler & Co. AG steelworks with the large areas of land that they required. In some cases, the company had to purchase individual plots of land from numerous small landowners in order to create one single site.