Autoblog

Porsche has been in the news quite a bit over the past few weeks. While one hand is embroiled in an emissions tax battle with the Mayor of London, the other hand is slowly scooping up shares of Volkswagen.

In related news, Porsche Chairman Wolfgang Porsche was nominated today to the Volkswagen supervisory board. This move may help fuel the fire that Porsche is aggressively pursuing a larger piece of Volkswagen than it publicly admits, but VW's board is astute. When it added Porsche to the Board, it also invited Lower Saxony Prime Minister Christian Wulff and his finance minister back for another term. Lower Saxony is the second largest shareholder at Volkswagen these days. With 82,000 VW jobs in their state, the region's veto power is significant to all involved, especially Porsche, which would have to square off against Lower Saxony's veto vote in a bid to fully take control of Volkswagen.

[Source: Automotive News, subs req'd]

Ron Gettelfinger, who was reelected to no one's surprise as president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) last month, will also be joining the DaimlerChrysler supervisory board as well. Gettelfinger is replacing UAW Vice President Nate Gooden who is stepping down from the board.

In Germany, such boards represent the shareholders and have duties such as selecting managers and supporting company decisions. The German union IG Metall, which is a board member, has traditionally offered one of its seats to the UAW.

[Source: Associated Press via USA Today]

The two-day meeting of Volkswagen's supervisory board ended with the subdued endorsement of CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder (at right) and his ForMotion restructuring plan, with a pronouncement by chairman Ferdinand Piech approving a five-year extension to Pischetsrieder's contract seemingly likely.

Perhaps responding to saber-rattling by Germany's powerful unions, the board gave lukewarm approval to the restructuring program that threatens up to 20,000 jobs at VW's German plants. Meanwhile, a German newspaper cited VW sources as saying that fully half of the jobs (a total of 50,000) at the company's plants in western Germany are redundant. There seems little chance that VW will shift production to its underutilized German plants - the company confirmed that not only did it not plan to close its manufacturing facility in Belgium, but it is going ahead with plans to build a new facility in Russia, with capacity for 115,000 vehicles a year.

[Source: Reuters, Volkswagen AG]