Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn was elected as chairman of the Scania supervisory board at its AGM yesterday. VW CFO Hans Dieter Pötsch and purchasing director Francisco Javier Garcia Sanz were also elected to the board.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
The appointments are seen as moving a step closer towards the merger of Scania with MAN and Volkswagen’s Brazilian commercial vehicle operations.
Volkswagen is the largest Scania shareholder with 36.4% of the company. It is also the largest shareholder in MAN and VW supervisory board chief, Ferdinand Piech, is expected to be elected to head the MAN supervisory board at its AGM later this month. MAN is the third largest shareholder in Scania with 14.8% of the shares.
MAN chief, Hakan Samuelsson said yesterday that he thought that there would be some development towards the merger after the MAN AG. “We are open to discussions and we have the scope to do that after the annual general meeting,” said Samuelsson.
The only shareholder group that has any real power to stop the merger is the Wallenberg family, which owns Investor AB, the second largest shareholder in Scania. Their main concern appears to be guarantees for jobs in Sweden.
