Volkswagen’s two biggest shareholders have struck a deal that will give sports car maker Porsche’s chief executive a seat on VW’s supervisory board from Monday, Porsche was quoted as saying on Friday.
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Under a deal agreed after weeks of talks with the German state of Lower Saxony, Porsche’s Wendelin Wiedeking will replace current VW board member Lord David Simon of Highbury, who is stepping down, a Porsche spokesman said, according to Reuters.
In addition, Porsche finance chief Holger Haerter will be proposed for a VW supervisory board seat at the annual meeting in May, to give it the second of two seats it has demanded as VW’s biggest investor, the report added.
” Haerter will be proposed to the annual meeting on May 3 as Porsche’s second representative and he will be elected there,” the spokesman told the news agency.
The spokesman reportedly added that VW chairman Ferdinand Piech will not seek re-election when his term expires next year and will be replaced by a “neutral party”. The Lower Saxony government confirmed this, Reuters noted.
Porsche reportedly said Wiedeking will thus not become VW chairman as speculated, but he will get a spot on the supervisory board’s praesidium, which will expand to six members from four.
Piech and Lower Saxony Premier Christian Wulff now represent investors on the panel, which also includes two labour representatives. Another representative of workers will also be appointed to the praesidium, Reuters said, noting that Porsche accumulated an 18.5% voting stake in VW last year and had insisted it get a corresponding two seats on VW’s supervisory board.
Lower Saxony, with 18.2 percent, had questioned whether this would pose a conflict of interest but the logjam had showed signs of breaking up of late, with Wiedeking saying good progress had been made, according to Reuters.
