Karl-Heinz Rummenigge's announcement that he will step down as Chairman of the Bayern Board of Directors ends an era at the German club marked by the transformation of its structures, by continuous growth in all aspects and by great financial stability .
Rummenigge had already entered Bayern's management in 1991, as vice president at a critical time for the club. Uli Hoenes, then CEO, promoted his return to the club as well as Franz Beckenbauer's as president.
However, the true era of Rummenigge begins ten years later, with a fundamental change in the structure of the club.
In 2002, the so-called Bayern joint stock company -Bayern AG for its acronym in German- was created in which the club currently has a majority of 75 per cent while the rest is divided equally by the Adidas and Allianz consortiums and the manufacturer of Audi cars.
Bayern AG has two key bodies. One is the board of directors, whose presidency was held by Rummenigge from the beginning and which is the executive body that has the initiative in terms of spending and, for sporting purposes, also in terms of transfers.
The other body is the Supervisory Board, which is basically a control body that, for example, has to approve all expenses above 25 million euros. At the head of this second body is the president of the club, who is currently Herbert Hainer.
The initial objective of the creation of the new company was to finance the new stadium, the current Allianz Arena, but its repercussions have gone far beyond that and has brought a constant increase in the capital and revenues of Bayern.
From the moment Rummenigge took over as CEO in the club's then new structure, Bayern has increased its annual turnover from 176 million to 679 million euros and has had profits in all fiscal years which, according to the website of the entity has ensured financial stability.
Part of the success was in certain spending discipline, also marked by Uli Hoeness from the Supervisory Board, which has sometimes led to sports sacrifices not to distort the pay scale of the staff.
The most recent case was the breakdown of negotiations with David Alaba for a renewal of his contract. Similar cases had happened before with Toni Kroos and, for a long time, with Michael Ballack.
The Ballack case was the most spectacular as Rummenigge made the announcement that the renewal offer had been withdrawn during the meeting, to which the partners reacted with a standing ovation.
The Rummenigge post will be taken over on July 1 by Oliver Kahn, another club legend as a player who has been on the Board of Directors for a year and a half.
Kahn appears to have embraced the Hoeness and Rummenigge doctrine on the spending line, as evidenced by some statements he has made since then.
According to the exporter, many European clubs have gotten into trouble precisely for paying salaries that in the long term they could not afford to support their players.
In sports, the era marked by Rummenigge has also been successful. From the moment they took over as CEO, Bayern have won the Champions League twice, in 2013 and 2020, 14 times the Bundesliga and 10 times the German Cup.
Since 2013 the Bundesliga titles have come in series. The 2011/2012 season had closed with three second places, behind Borussia Dortmund in the Bundesliga and the German Cup and behind Chelsea in the Champions League.
Following the 5-2 defeat in the German Cup final, Rummenigge delivered a speech that was somewhat programmatic.
“There is a team in Germany that today is better than Bayern. That is something that we have to recognize and correct as soon as possible, ”he said.
In the following season Bayern won the triple after two seasons without titles.