Volkswagen’s supervisory board is to hold an extraordinary meeting tomorrow at which finance chief Hans Dieter Poetsch is expected to be appointed as new head of the 20-member controlling panel, two sources said on Sunday.
Europe’s biggest automaker faces the worst business crisis in its 78-year history after it admitted cheating diesel emissions tests in the US, with 11 million vehicles affected worldwide.
As well as appointing Poetsch, the board meeting is to discuss the latest findings of VW’s internal investigation, which has already led to more than 10 suspensions of senior managers, a source close to the board said.
Poetsch was originally due to be named to the supervisory board at an extraordinary general meeting planned for Nov. 9, but Volkswagen said on Thursday last week that the extraordinary meeting would be pushed back.
At an internal company meeting last week at the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, Poetsch said the situation was an “existence-threatening crisis for the company,” albeit a surmountable one, the Welt am Sonntag reported.
Volkswagen took out full pages in the Bild am Sonntag and Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspapers, replacing what it said should have been an advertisement celebrating the 25th anniversary of German reunification with this message: “We will do everything possible to win back your trust.”
A survey by German market research firm Puls showed 41 percent of consumers see the brand as damaged for the long term, while 11 percent say they no longer want to buy a VW, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she expected a limited impact on the German economy.
“I believe that the reputation of the German economy, the confidence in the German economy is not so shaken that we do not continue to count as a good business location,” she told German radio.
Bild am Sonntag reported that several engineers at VW have confessed to installing the cheat software in 2008 when Ulrich Hackenberg, the suspended head of research and development at premium brand Audi, was still head of technical development at the VW brand.
VW declined comment.
VW provided the first information on Friday last week allowing customers to find out if their vehicles are affected, and it needs to tell Germany’s KBA watchdog by tomorrow when and how its cars will comply with emissions standards.
New CEO Matthias Mueller is expected to meet about 20,000 workers at a closed-door factory event today to discuss the crisis.
EXTRATERRITORIAL REACH: China extended its legal jurisdiction to ban some dual-use goods of Chinese origin from being sold to the US, even by third countries Beijing has set out to extend its domestic laws across international borders with a ban on selling some goods to the US that applies to companies both inside and outside China. The new export control rules are China’s first attempt to replicate the extraterritorial reach of US and European sanctions by covering Chinese products or goods with Chinese parts in them. In an announcement this week, China declared it is banning the sale of dual-use items to the US military and also the export to the US of materials such as gallium and germanium. Companies and people overseas would be subject to
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) yesterday said that Intel Corp would find itself in the same predicament as it did four years ago if its board does not come up with a core business strategy. Chang made the remarks in response to reporters’ questions about the ailing US chipmaker, once an archrival of TSMC, during a news conference in Taipei for the launch of the second volume of his autobiography. Intel unexpectedly announced the immediate retirement of former chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger last week, ending his nearly four-year tenure and ending his attempts to revive the
WORLD DOMINATION: TSMC’s lead over second-placed Samsung has grown as the latter faces increased Chinese competition and the end of clients’ product life cycles Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) retained the No. 1 title in the global pure-play wafer foundry business in the third quarter of this year, seeing its market share growing to 64.9 percent to leave South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, the No. 2 supplier, further behind, Taipei-based TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report. TSMC posted US$23.53 billion in sales in the July-September period, up 13.0 percent from a quarter earlier, which boosted its market share to 64.9 percent, up from 62.3 percent in the second quarter, the report issued on Monday last week showed. TSMC benefited from the debut of flagship
TENSE TIMES: Formosa Plastics sees uncertainty surrounding the incoming Trump administration in the US, geopolitical tensions and China’s faltering economy Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), Taiwan’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday posted overall revenue of NT$118.61 billion (US$3.66 billion) for last month, marking a 7.2 percent rise from October, but a 2.5 percent fall from one year earlier. The group has mixed views about its business outlook for the current quarter and beyond, as uncertainty builds over the US power transition and geopolitical tensions. Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠), a vertically integrated supplier of plastic resins and petrochemicals, reported a monthly uptick of 15.3 percent in its revenue to NT$18.15 billion, as Typhoon Kong-rey postponed partial shipments slated for October and last month, it said. The
RSS