Goodwill

As a red herring, ex-CEO Bill McDermott removed fellow board member Bernd Leukert, who is now a successful board member at Deutsche Bank.

Professor Hasso Plattner criticized other traits of his former CEO in a recent Handelsblatt interview. McDermott was focused on SAP's stock market value.

Technical solutions, such as integrating the cloud acquisitions into the SAP base, were not his thing. Bill McDermott financed the acquisition of the cloud companies largely with outside capital.

Financial debt thus rose to around 13 billion euros, as researched by Handelsblatt (see link). And further it can be read:

"If the purchase price is higher than the assessable assets of the company, the difference is booked as a hope value, called goodwill. [...] The goodwill booked in the SAP balance sheet is considerable."

Currently, goodwill at SAP amounts to around 29 billion euros, which is almost the same as SAP's equity. Thus, the Handelsblatt correctly concludes, it becomes clear that even the most valuable DAX group with a market capitalization of a good 130 billion euros is not safe from adversity.