Volkswagen Board Meets to Anoint New CEO
25 Settembre 2015 - 2:50PM
Dow Jones News
Volkswagen AG's supervisory board assembled Friday for a meeting
that could run until evening to anoint a new chief executive, shake
up the senior management team and begin repairing damage from a
massive scandal that has erased almost one-third of the company's
market value.
The 20-member board appeared poised to name Matthias Mü ller,
the head of Volkswagen's Porsche sports-car unit, as the
replacement for Martin Winterkorn, according to people familiar
with the situation.
Mr. Winterkorn resigned Wednesday after the German company
admitted that up to 11 million cars could be affected by
Volkswagen's efforts to deliberately circumvent environmental
regulations. Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen now faces the prospect of
multibillion-dollar financial penalties, massive costs for fixing
or replacing affected cars, and lawsuits.
Mr. Mü ller, a long-serving employee of the Volkswagen group,
would oversee a sprawling empire with €200 billion ($225 billion)
in sales that produces models including inexpensive Czech-made
Skoda cars, its world-known VW models, as well as luxury vehicles
from Audi, Bentley and Bugatti. It also makes Ducati motorcycles
and Scania trucks.
Volkswagen's sheer size—the group employs 600,000 people
world-wide and has acknowledged 11 million cars could be affected
by the emissions problem—shows the extent of the challenge that the
supervisory board faces, not least in demonstrating Volkswagen can
make a clean break from its past.
"Today's supervisory board meeting is of enormous importance as
a first step to clean up at Volkswagen," said Professor Ferdinand
Dudenhö ffer, head of the Center Automotive Research at University
Duisburg-Essen in western Germany. "Further steps have to follow
and Volkswagen needs a new supervisory board chairman from
outside."
The newly named chairman, appointed early this month, is the
group's current finance chief, Hans Dieter Pö tsch. Mr. Pö tsch, an
Austrian, is well respected in investment circles and understands
the company deeply. He has been a member of VW's management board
since 2003.
"Volkswagen needs to think big and bold," said Bernstein
Research analyst Max Warbuton. One idea he proposes would be an
offer to buy back and scrap the incriminated diesel cars sold in
the U.S. as part of a charm offensive with government, regulators,
and the media.
With environmental campaigners protesting outside Volkswagen's
headquarters on Friday, coming clean on the emissions scandal is
one priority, analysts say.
Details are so far scarce on how many people were involved in
installing so-called "defeat devices" on nearly half a million
diesel-powered cars in the U.S. Volkswagen has said only that it is
demanding resignations from some top engineers. Mr. Winterkorn
denied any knowledge of the test-cheating software.
The emissions crisis has exposed Volkswagen's cumbersome
corporate governance. Volkswagen officials have acknowledged the
company knew about the U.S. emissions-test problem for months. U.S.
regulators accused it of stonewalling.
The auto maker is controlled by the Porsche and Pië ch families,
the descendants of Beetle-inventor Wolfgang Porsche. The German
state of Lower Saxony has a blocking 20% minority stake. The other
major owner of voting stock is the Persian Gulf emirate of
Qatar.
Analysts have long noted that the ownership structure limits
change. Lower Saxony's blocking vote and Volkswagen's position as
the state's biggest employer mean the state has a clear interest in
protecting jobs at the company.
Notably absent from Friday's meeting is Ferdinand Pië ch, who
was forced in April to resign as chairman following a failed
attempt to oust Mr. Winterkorn. Mr. Mü ller is understood to be
close to the Porsche and Pië ch families.
Other senior members of the board include: IG Metall Deputy
Chairman Berthold Huber—a sign of organized labor's important role
in German corporate governance; Qatar Minister of State and CEO of
Qatar Airways Akbar Al Bakar; Lower Saxony's Minister of Economic
Affairs Olaf Lies; and Annika Falkengren, CEO of Swedish bank
Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB and one of four women on the
board.
Friedrich Geiger contributed to this article
Write to Matthew Curtin at matthew.curtin@wsj.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 25, 2015 08:35 ET (12:35 GMT)
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