On September 12, Linde AG and Praxair, Inc. discontinued their talks about a possible merger as announced by both companies in their home pages. The expected birth of a world No. 1 industrial gas company collapsed halfway through. The reason of quitting the talks is cited to have something to do with governance issues.

On September 13 of the next day, it was announced that CEO Wolfgang Buechele of Linde would not seek to extend his contract beyond April next year and CFO Georg Denoke would leave the company immediately on the date of announcement.

In 2014 CEO Buechele entered Linde from a Finnish chemical major and assumed the position of CEO of Linde. In May of this year the former CEO Wolfgang Reitzle came back to Linde and took office as chairman of Supervisory Board which has the power to shuffle personnel of directors. He used to be the very person to pursue acquisition of BOC and other companies during his office of Linde’s CEO and to promote expansion of the corporate business scale.