Bundestag Budget Committee Clears Germany's €7.2 Billion Purchase of a 40% KNDS Stake Ahead of a July Listing

The Haushaltsausschuss cleared the state's entry into KNDS — the Amsterdam-based maker of the Leopard 2, Leclerc, Caesar and PzH 2000 — with the KfW development bank acquiring 40% for up to €7.2 billion. The stake comes from the German Wegmann family group, which sells its entire 50% holding and exits after 144 years; France's state vehicle GIAT trims its own holding from 50% to 40%, and the two sell-downs together form a 20% free float placed with institutions. The result is symmetrical — France and Germany each 40%, the float 20% — with the state paying roughly €350 million a year in financing and administration costs.

The purchase is the gate to a dual listing on the Frankfurt and Paris exchanges in mid-July, sold to institutional investors only and issuing no new shares, at a working valuation of about €12–15 billion — trimmed from earlier, higher talk amid investor pushback — against an order book near €33 billion, some seven times 2025 revenue. Berlin secures a “golden share” over the German subsidiary and supervisory-board seats, mirroring France's, under a ten-year lock-up in which neither state may fall below 30% without the other's consent. The measure passed with the Greens abstaining — their budget spokesman accused the government of letting itself “be blackmailed by a super-rich owner family” over the price — and Die Linke voting against. Defence Minister Boris Pistorius called KNDS “indispensable for the operational readiness of our land forces.”

The proprietary read. Germany is finally doing what France has always done: putting the state on the cap table of its tank champion. The €7.2 billion buys parity with Paris, a golden share and a lock-up that keeps KNDS binational and sovereign through the listing — the point is control, not return. But the Greens' word, erpressen, names the bind honestly: the families held a strategic asset the state could not let drift, and priced it accordingly. As Signal No. 91 noted, rearmament is rewriting who owns Europe's defence primes, and the government is now a shareholder as well as a customer.