SAP’s bosses said diversity and inclusion schemes must now be “adapted” to fit "applicable law," which is corporate code for abandoning any real commitment while pretending it is all terribly complicated and unavoidable.

The German giant also confirmed to Handelsblatt newspaper that executive board bonuses would no longer be linked to any kind of diversity performance, giving the old boys’ club a free pass to continue business as usual.

Worse still, SAP said it would no longer specifically promote women to certain management levels in the future. In other words, women will be excluded from upper management.

The internal memo revealed SAP’s diversity and inclusion team will be merged into its Corporate Social Responsibility unit, where initiatives usually go to die quietly, buried under a pile of PowerPoint presentations.

The US government has been placing pressure on European companies to abandon diversity programmes, created to help women, disabled people and people of colour survive corporate boardrooms. While most sane companies have told the US government that segregation never went down big in Europe and told it to sling its hook, some of the bigger European companies who have dealings over the pond are running scared. 

T-Mobile US, owned by German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom, is another outfit running scared. After writing to the US Federal Communications Commission to say it was ditching DEI targets, the firm’s approval of the takeover of Lumos was given the nod.  Although that was probably “pure coincidence”.