Germany’s second-largest steelmaker, Salzgitter, is not planning to acquire a holding in Volkswagen, the company told Reuters on Monday.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
“Buying a stake has not been and is not an issue,” a Salzgitter spokesman told the news agency.
Reuters said that Der Spiegel magazine reported on Sunday that the conservative premier of the German state of Lower Saxony, Christian Wulff, said Salzgitter was willing to dip into its EUR1bn (US$1.22 billion) in liquidity to take a stake in VW and support Wulff’s course on the VW board.
Lower Saxony, which controls a quarter of the shares of Salzgitter and 18.2% of VW’s voting rights, is home to both companies, the report noted.
The comments were reportedly made when Wulff, a key member of Volkswagen’s supervisory board, and Porsche chief executive Wendelin Wiedeking were negotiating over the makeup of the VW board.
Reuters said Porsche, VW’s biggest shareholder with 18.5% of the voting rights, will send both Wiedeking and finance chief Holger Haerter to the board as shareholder representatives in a deal that will see a neutral party replacing Ferdinand Piech as VW chairman in 2007.
In an interview with the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung on Monday cited by Reuters, Wulff said German steel manager Juergen Grossmann of Georgsmarienhuette would replace Gerhard Cromme of ThyssenKrupp on the VW supervisory board. Cromme is not seeking re-election in May.
Wulff reportedly added that a decision would be made next year on whether Grossmann would then be elected chairman of the board.
