Martin Winterkorn and Ferdinand Piëch: Rehabilitated and struck – tagesspiegel

18:34 clock Henrik Mortsiefer

Paradoxically, Ferdinand Piëch has the company performed a double service: his plenitude of power will be smaller and Martin Winterkorn’s management vulnerable. A comment.

Martin Winterkorn remains what it is since 2007: Volkswagen boss. Instead he was deposed overnight, the Supervisory Board wishes to extend his term. Is all excitement, the VW patriarch Ferdinand Piëch donated a week ago, have been in vain? Everything remains the same in the second largest automotive group in the world? You would have to deal any longer, when in Wolfsburg and Salzburg not within one week (the company) story had been written with the two gray-haired men at the top VW

On the open stage, with harsh words -. And . far-reaching consequences, not just for Volkswagen and its 600,000 employees around the world

How must feel the Martin Winterkorn (67), with almost 16 million euros in the year of highest paid German Manager, literally bumped into one sentence of his evil Chairman (78) from the base of grandeur. On Thursday, a week ago, the VW Boss was still pleased at his track record: The Twelve-brand group with 200 billion euros in sales is expected to be the world leader ahead of Toyota. Just one day later, however, after Piëch’s sentence, his mistakes and failures are discussed in public. Volkswagen is like a construction site. From the Star has become an outcast. And now: “mentor” Piëch Winterkorn speaks of the confidence he had just taken from him. The message: Everything is

The seemingly Ironclad

But nothing good at VW.. “I am to distance Winterkorn,” Piech said. A harmless sentence. But speaking of Piëch, laconic and bulky as always, the words on the weapon between two men who think of little more than “their” companies. There are feudal relations in the VW Empire: The most powerful clan in the Piëch and Porsche, where the company is majority owned ruled as a king. Who’s fall from grace, must go. Those who, like Winterkorn (“Wilko”) remains successful long idolized. Who does not disturb the peace as the council, is being courted. Everything known. Often criticized. What has changed at VW little.

This might be different now. The rehabilitation of winter grain is also a defeat for Piëch, the seemingly unassailable. The grandson of the beetle-inventor Ferdinand Porsche is therefore not predictable. As long as he is alive and sane, he will defend the heritage. But his desire to push ahead Winterkorn out of office, has not met with the approval of the employee bank of Lower Saxony and even parts of the family. Paradoxically, Piëch has the company performed a double service:. His plenitude of power will be less and winter grain management be vulnerable

Younger men, about the future Volkswagen boss Diess or truck Board Renschler, the companies will dominate more , Weaknesses as the flaccid productivity of VW, the residue on the US market, the lack of cheap car or the centralization of key processes and decisions that are now visible to all.

So was it in the end good that Ferdinand Piëch spoke a powerful word? Did he just did what a supervisory board must do in terms of corporate governance: Check the board? It looks like this. Sympathetic one of the autocrat must therefore not be.