This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A fight between shareholders over free sausages at Daimler’s annual meeting has overshadowed the German luxury carmaker’s declaration of its highest dividend ever.

The dispute at Daimler’s meeting in Berlin on Wednesday quickly turned ugly, forcing the company to call the police.

The row broke out when one man repeatedly went to the buffet and began wrapping up several sausages to take home, whereupon a female shareholder intervened to tick him off, resulting in a shouting match and the police being called.

Answering shareholder questions at the meeting, Daimler board chairman Manfred Bischoff said: “We had to call the police to settle the matter.”

A Daimler spokeswoman said it was a verbal altercation and the police were called to calm matters – because the female shareholder wanted to file a complaint for slander, and did so.

At the centre of the row were Saitenwürschtle, Bischoff said with a wink – long, thin sausages from Swabia in Daimler’s home state of Baden-Württemberg in south-west Germany. Elsewhere they are known as Wiener Würstchen or frankfurter.

The company served about 12,500 sausages to the 5,500 shareholders at the meeting for lunch, alongside bread rolls, wraps, potato soup and potato salad, followed by cake in the afternoon. The buffet was near the area where the carmaker showcased its latest models.

Bischoff concluded: “We either need more sausages or we get rid of them altogether.”

Daimler shareholders approved a dividend of €3.25 a share, the highest in the company’s history – enough in itself to buy a double-pack of sausages at German discounter Aldi. Swabians are well-known for their thriftiness in Germany.

Buffet lunches are part of the culture of German shareholder meetings, which tend to be lengthy affairs. Some events last all day and run well into the evening, because each shareholder has the right to speak and ask detailed questions. The Daimler annual meeting lasted from 10am until 4.15pm local time, the shortest AGM the spokeswoman could recall – despite the dispute.

German singer-songwriter Reinhard Mey immortalised Die heiße Schlacht am kalten Buffet (The hot battle at the cold buffet) in a 1970s song, which featured a high society lady filling up her handbag with buffet leftovers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reinhard Mey’s Die heiße Schlacht am kalten Buffet.

UK companies also used to serve up lavish buffet lunches but have cut back in recent years, although many still serve sandwiches or tea, coffee and biscuits. Marks & Spencer, which delighted shareholders with free ice-cream and wine at the 2010 AGM, prompted shareholder wrath when it ditched the traditional lunch two years later, offering instead a goody bag worth £6.59.

Traditionally, many firms have handed out goody bags comprising a selection of their products alongside the buffet lunch – tobacco companies used to give away cigarettes in the past.