The plant engineering expertise of earlier years was concentrated in Ferrostaal Industrieanlagen GmbH in 2017, merged with Ferrostaal Trading GmbH in 2023 and has since been continued under FERROSTAAL Germany. With important key employees, its own organizations in Chile, Brazil and Algeria and access to FERROSTAAL's established global network, small and medium-sized plant construction projects for the promising field of decarbonization are successfully developed and managed from Hamburg, Essen and Oestrich-Winkel together with selected technology partners.

Both the company and the new shareholder have high hopes for the takeover by Münchmeyer Petersen & Co. now that the disputes with the legal authorities and the former shareholders have been concluded. However, the consequences of the compliance affair go far beyond the fine paid and in the years that followed, the company and its shareholders had to deal with the consequences. The banks in particular have permanently lost confidence and are not prepared to finance either the plant construction business or the trading business. The shareholders are forced to take new paths. For some parts of the company, new owners are sought and found who are better suited to the situation, while other business areas are transferred to joint ventures or have to be closed down. The operating business is completely transferred to new units and the old FERROSTAAL becomes an asset-managing organization with pension obligations.

Takeover by Münchmeyer Petersen & Co - FERROSTAAL is in serious trouble. IPIC refuses to support the company, large parts of the top management have to leave and key employees lose confidence in the future, as do long-standing business and joint venture partners, although work had already begun in 2009 to introduce a global compliance management system that meets the highest international requirements. In this situation, Münchmeyer Petersen & Co. takes up the negotiations conducted in 2008 - at the time it was one of the few bidders alongside IPIC - and, together with partners, makes MAN a takeover offer, which it accepts after IPIC redeems its shares at the end of 2011.

A very select group of potential interested parties is approached and a short time later, in spring 2009, the majority stake (70%) is sold to the International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC), a sovereign wealth fund from Abu Dhabi. In anticipation of major petrochemical plant construction projects in IPIC's home region in particular, FERROSTAAL appears to have found the ideal new shareholder, with the remaining 30% also to be acquired at the end of 2010. However, things are developing differently than planned and expected.

Triggered by corruption investigations at MAN, FERROSTAAL also came under the scrutiny of the judicial authorities in summer 2009. The globally active company, some of which has operations in countries that are at the bottom of the so-called Corruption Perceptions Index, is comprehensively investigated without the support of the shareholders at this difficult time. There are public recriminations between the old and new shareholders and, at the end of 2011, convictions and the imposition of a substantial fine against FERROSTAAL in connection with the sale of submarines.

But the changes go even further: although great efforts are still being made until 2007 to develop a joint service and sales platform for MAN abroad in order to strengthen MAN's performance and market position with the help of FERROSTAAL, the decision to sell FERROSTAAL as a whole comes as a surprise in 2008.

FERROSTAAL, which has since been renamed MAN FERROSTAAL, has to adapt and is also being partially reorganized. The considerably more stringent compliance requirements in international business transactions since the mid-1990s also make it necessary to subject individual business areas and markets to a new risk assessment. The business will be divided into two divisions, large-scale plant engineering and the international machinery trading and automotive business, which is subsumed under the term Services. The Renewable Energies division is new and has been successfully developed over the years with plants in Spain, Portugal and Mongolia. In contrast, the steel trading business, which is not only part of the company's DNA, but above all the economic backbone of numerous subsidiaries abroad, is transferred to a joint venture with Münchmeyer Petersen & Co. from Hamburg and Grupo Villacero from Mexico.

In the first decade of the new century, some key parameters in the company's business environment change, which is easier to perceive in retrospect than during the years in question. MAN is realigned during these years and successively focuses on the Commercial Vehicles and Engines business areas. Subsidiaries such as the printing press manufacturer MAN Roland, the steelworks manufacturer SMS and the conveyor systems specialist Takraf, which had previously been important suppliers and partners of FERROSTAAL, were sold.

Ships are built on behalf of customers, railroad systems are delivered to emerging developing countries and petrochemical plants are planned, delivered, assembled and operated as co-owners. Important industrial companies such as Kirchfeld, DSD Dillinger Stahlbau, Deutsche Industrieanlagen, Fritz-Werner and Thyssen Rheinstahl Technik are taken over in whole or in part and incorporated into the company's delivery and service program. The stockholding steel trade gradually develops into a very successful service business for automobile manufacturers and the company also increasingly works on armaments business together with Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft (HDW) in Kiel.

Turnover, then still in DM, already exceeded the billion mark at the end of the 1960s, climbing to over DM 2 billion in the mid-1970s and to over DM 4 billion in the mid-1980s, making FERROSTAAL one of the largest German companies - as a service provider for the growing German industry and as a service provider for MAN AG, which emerged from the merger of GHH with MAN in 1986.

Soon, in addition to the supply of machinery and industrial equipment, the planning and project management of industrial plants is also offered and a major project to supply a steelworks to Argentina is acquired in the 1950s. With the founding of FERROSTAAL Piping Supply in 1953, another important foundation stone was laid, namely business with customers from the oil and gas industry, as well as in particular with German and international engineering firms commissioned with the construction of large industrial plants.

As a non-manufacturing service provider, FERROSTAAL develops into a partner for industrial projects. The focus of the steel business is increasingly shifting abroad and the company is becoming a general contractor in the technical business, providing lead support for major industrial projects worldwide. Wherever infrastructure and industry are being built, FERROSTAAL is involved and responsible for planning, production and assembly. Major contracts for the steel-producing industry in Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Indonesia and Mexico set standards, as do major projects in oil-producing countries, the realization of which requires exceptional financing concepts that would hardly be possible without FERROSTAAL's close relationships with international banks and financial institutions. With over 2,000 employees, FERROSTAAL is now represented on all continents and is probably the most important German foreign trade organization with a legendary reputation at home and abroad.

The company is able to recover quite quickly from the serious setbacks caused by the Second World War and resume its old business relationships. As a trading company, it knows the needs and requirements of its customers and identifies the necessary suppliers. Thanks to its roots in the Ruhr region and in the iron and steel trade, it has close links with industrial companies, construction firms, shipyards and the railroad industry, which open up additional business opportunities.

In the early years, the company focused on trading in iron, but even then it developed remarkable activities in expanding its foreign relations. With branches in Santiago de Chile, Lima, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Surabaya, sales offices in New York, Shanghai, Baghdad and Teheran and holdings in foreign trading companies, especially in South Africa, Hermann Nölle's iron trading company develops into a global company within a few years.

In 1930, Gutehoffnungshütte (GHH) acquires Ferrostaal GmbH and merges it with the company Steffens & Nölle, which dates back to 1898 and which GHH had already acquired in 1924. The resulting new company is entered in the commercial register in Essen as Ferrostaal AG on September 30, 1930. The business background to the merger is GHH's desire to use FERROSTAAL's branches as a sales organization for its diverse product range, which FERROSTAAL also considers to be a lucrative prospect.

FERROSTAAL is founded in 1919 as N.V. Algemeen Ijzer- en Staal-Maatschappij FERROSTAAL in The Hague and moves to Essen shortly afterwards in 1926. In addition to Metallgesellschaft from Frankfurt, the founding shareholders include the banking houses M.M. Warburg from Hamburg and Dresdner Bank. After the First World War and as a result of the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, the Netherlands is the springboard into world and foreign iron trade.