You are Katrin Bergmann, controller of the Mobility Drives division at Hellweg Antriebstechnik in Dortmund. The supervisory board wants an independent controlling opinion on the division president's three-year plan before it releases €180 million, and it wants it within three weeks.
The situation
It is Tuesday, 22 September 2026. Hellweg is an SDAX-listed maker of industrial drive systems, with €1.9 billion of revenue and a 9.2% EBIT margin. Mobility Drives, at €640 million, is the division the group has chosen as its electrification engine. Two weeks ago its president, Stefan Reuter, showed the board a plan to take it to €1.3 billion in three years at a 14% margin. The board liked it and is ready to release €180 million of capital, but it wants your opinion first.
The plan adds €660 million of revenue, and 62% of that growth depends on two electric-vehicle platform contracts that are not yet signed. Over the last three years the division's own forecasts have missed by ±22% on average. And the group CFO remembers another division that hit every milestone in its plan and still fell about 30% short of its numbers. Beneath the revenue bridge, two cost centres have submitted budgets that look padded, while the top line in the same plan is stretched thin in the opposite direction.
You have held the seat for three years and answer to two people: to Reuter on a dotted line, and to the CFO, who commissioned this opinion. You have run three planning cycles together without a real collision. This is the first time you have been asked to test one of his plans rather than consolidate it, and he will be in the room when you present it.