The stand off between Volkswagen and Porsche seems to have ended with the chairmen of both carmakers saying their goal was to press ahead with the planned merger of the two, after all.

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A VW statement said that that the supervisory board chairmen, VW’s Ferdinand Piëch and Porsche’s Wolfgang Porsche, had confirmed their goal remained the “creation of an integrated automotive group”.


The statement added both companies would move forward with efforts to attain this, “working in a constructive and consensual manner with all concerned”.


A merger of the two companies was agreed earlier this month by the Porsche and Piech familes who control the sports carmaker which, in turn, holds a 51% stake in its much larger rival.


This effectively ended Porsche’s attempt to take control of VW after building up some EUR9 bn ($12.2 bn) in debt in doing so.

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The merger plans stalled at the weekend after VW’s CEO Martin Winterkorn complained of a lack of constructive atmosphere and transparency on the part of Porsche. Piech last week criticised Porsche management for running up debt in acquiring its VW stake.


Separately, the German State of Lower Saxony, VW’s second largest shareholder, has said that any new company resulting from a merger of the two carmakers should be open to outside investors.


The state’s prime minister Christian Wulff said he envisaged a possible ownership split of Porsche with 50%, Lower Saxony 20% and free float investors 30%.


 


Wulff added that the role of Lower Saxony should be unchanged, hinting that the state will not want to see any change to the decades old, so-called VW Law which allows Lower Saxony a 20 percent minority blocking stake in the company rather than 25 percent which is normal under German business law.