When concluding a management board service agreement, a joint-stock company is represented by the supervisory board which must pass a resolution on the conclusion of the service agreement. When the agreement itself is subsequently concluded, the supervisory board is usually represented by its chairman. The Regional Court Munich I (ruling dated 13 February 2020; file no. 5 HK O 2393/19) has now dealt with the question of whether a supervisory board chairman who concludes a service agreement in the name of the company with a designated management board member in the absence of a corresponding supervisory board resolution is obliged to pay damages to the designated management board member.

In its ruling of 5 April 2018, the Munich Finance Court decided that the exemption from inheritance tax for family homes does not apply to an undeveloped, in terms of land register law independent plot of land, which adjoins the family home, even if the two plots of land form an economic unit. The appeal decision of the BFH is still pending.

The Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection and the Federal Ministry of Finance have jointly presented a ministers’ bill for a law on the introduction of electronic securities. The bill focuses on creating a law on electronic securities (eWpG-E). This enables the replacement of securities certificates (verbrieften Wertpapieren) through registration in an electronic securities register. The bill treats securities based on cryptotechnology (e.g. blockchain) as a subset of electronic securities. In the future, it should be possible to issue and manage crypto-securities via decentralized crypto-securities registers without the involvement of intermediaries.