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Power struggle at VW settled for the time being
The leadership crisis at Volkswagen is to end with a further erosion of the power of CEO Herbert Diess. After a week-long power struggle between the controversial manager and the influential VW works council, the supervisory board decided on Thursday to reorganize the board of directors. At the beginning of the year, VW brand boss Ralf Brandstätter moves up to the group’s board of directors and takes over the new department “Volkswagen Passenger Cars” and group boss Diess is to hand over the management of the important, recently ailing China business to Brandstätter in mid-2022. However, supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch was overall very optimistic: O-TON HANS DIETER POETSCH: “At this point I would like to point out that our financial starting point, in order to cope with the enormous investment sums, is extremely solid and robust. We are very confident, to make the Volkswagen Group fit for the future with the investments that have now been decided. ” Herbert Diess had turned the works council against him at the end of September by considering a possible reduction of tens of thousands of jobs. The state of Lower Saxony, which has a 20 percent stake in Volkswagen, was also appalled. However, the owners had only extended Diess’ contract to 2025 in July and confirmed its course of accelerating the transformation into a technology provider based on the model of the US electric car manufacturer Tesla.
After a week-long power struggle between the controversial manager and the influential VW works council, the supervisory board decided on Thursday to reorganize the board of directors.