Talk:Siemens

Scandal in lead

I took the liberty of expanding on the scandal in the article lead.

Beginning in 2005, Siemens became embroiled in a multi-national bribery scandal. One component of this scandal was the Siemens Greek bribery scandal over deals between Siemens AG and Greek government officials during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Siemen's activities came under legal scrutiny when complaints from prosecutors in Italy, Liechtenstein and Switzerland lead to Germany authorities opening investigations, followed by a US investigation in 2006 concerning their activities while listed on US stock exchanges. The investigators found that bribing officials to win contracts was standard operating procedure. Over that time period the company paid around $1.3 billion in bribes in many countries and kept separate books to hide them. Settlement negotiations took place through most of 2008 with settlement terms announced in December 2008. The company paid a total of about $1.6 billion, around $800 million in each of the US and Germany. This was the largest bribery fine in history, at the time. The company was also obligated to spend $1 billion on setting up and funding new internal compliance regimens. Siemens pleaded guilty to violating accounting provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; the parent company did not plead guilty to paying bribes (although its Bangladesh and Venezuela subsidiaries did).

References

This was my rapid compression of the larger account in the article below. I tried to keep this short and lead-worthy. My opinion is that if it seems to large for the lead as it now stands, that's mostly because the rest of the lead itself is far too short for such a large enterprise, with such a long history.

Another solution (which I favour to some degree) is for the Siemen's scandal to have its own main article. It baffles me how the Greek scandal has its own page, but the larger investigation does not. If this lead had an efficient link that that lead, much of what I've added here could instead become lead text there, permitting an even shorter summary in this article, something along the lines of:

In 2008, as part of the Siemens multinational bribery scandal, Siemens pleaded guilty to violating accounting provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and was fined $800 million in each of the US and Germany, and obligated to spend $1 billion on setting up and funding new internal compliance regimens.

With much of this off-loaded to the proposed main scandal article, this much shorter version would suffice here, IMO—but not until, IMNSHO. — MaxEnt 19:00, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

@MaxEnt: I don't think this much scandal info belongs in the lead, per WP:UNDUE. It looks like POV-pushing to try to publicly shame Siemens. Certainly not a paragraph more than double the size of the rest of the lead. Microsoft's antitrust challenges are far more well known, but nobody would argue that that's what they're notable for in their lead. If anything, I'd simply say something like "The company has been involved in various bribery scandals in its history, and was fined numerous times." You've already got "scandal" prominently in the TOC - why pile it on? TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 23:48, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

head offices

Siemens has two head offices, Berlin and Munich. Please see https://new.siemens.com/de/de/general/legal.html under heading "Sitz der Gesellschaft". — Preceding unsigned comment added by JPprivate (talk • contribs) 02:52, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

"Siemens ELFA" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Siemens ELFA and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 October 8#Siemens ELFA until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 14:35, 8 October 2022 (UTC)