The Volkswagen handlebar Martin Winterkorn has lost the favor of supervisory board chairman Ferdinand Piëch. He fights. But his chances are slim.
Martin Winterkorn, CEO of Volkswagen AG | © Ole Spata / dpa
On Saturday, the football went to the home game of his favorite football club FC Bayern Munich. Sunday night he was at the opening ceremony of the Hannover Messe on Monday he received there on the VW stand Angela Merkel. He smiled at the cameras, shaking hands and chatting with colleagues. Martin Winterkorn, 67, did his duty, as if nothing had happened. A radio reporter asked about his future. “I have one,” he said with a smile and went off.
But probably looks very different than it had been presented to the Chief of around 600,000 employees after almost 35 years of work and an unprecedented rise in the Volkswagen Group , His contract runs until the end of 2016. By then he would have surpassed the industry king Toyota -. And then inherit the supervisory board chairman Ferdinand Piëch reward
Gone. Last Friday, a single sentence nullified all plans. “I am to distance Winterkorn” So Piëch escaped via Spiegel Online its top managers a complete surprise confidence. Piëch, who discovered Winterkorn and promoted after the manager was changed to Audi early eighties by Bosch. Yes, by pushing him even in 2007 as CEO in Wolfsburg.
And now? A CEO can not last long when its Chairman concerns him so hard. Since not count all the great merits, all proven loyalty. As he jumps with managers who lost his favor, Porsche’s grandson Piëch has described in his book, Auto.Biographie years ago: “From the deepest conviction, I’d rather have an inappropriate for the situation in question top managers fired than to risk a weakening of the company. ”
Winterkorn must be deeply disappointed. He said nothing, but left by his environment announced that he will fight. Once he received applause from all sides. No wonder: the chairman of the board had clearly warned neither his top managers nor the other board members. . Full Wolfsburg has since been head
“Winterkorn is damaged, Piëch is isolated,” says a veteran corporate managers – and the three weeks prior to the Annual General Meeting of Volkswagen, in fact the record figures of last year should be celebrated. Right now, because the points for electric mobility and automated driving must be provided.
While the car companies grow with new competitors Google and Apple, threaten Germany’s largest industrial group, a crippling power struggle. Therefore leading board members jumped at the attacked CEO. The council boss Bernd Osterloh powerful railed against unnecessary personnel debates, Stephan Weil, Prime Minister of the major shareholder Lower Saxony, castigated Piëch’s behavior as “harmful”. And even in the family clan of the Porsche and Piëch, who control more than 50 percent of the voting rights in Volkswagen, there were contraindications. “Mr Piëch’s private opinion” is the declared his cousin and Supervisory colleague Wolfgang Porsche. As a supporter of Ferdinand Piëch arrive there at times only his wife Ursula (“Uschi”) and his brother Hans Michel to see.
But what drove Ferdinand Piëch to as the worst possible time to dismantle its top managers ? A key to this could be the role of wife, Ursula, he hauled in the VW supervisory board three years ago. Piëch had learned that the mirror researched how he was trying to build up his wife as his successor at the head of the Supervisory Board. Piëch announced thereupon in the mirror -Fachredakteur and made it clear that he neither his wife nor have provided another family member for that. A visibly aged father of twelve children wanted to take his great support from the firing line. In this conversation, then fell and the momentous set of its “distance” to Winterkorn. It must have been bubbling in Piëch. And he made it clear that he decide who will advance to the end of his term in 2017 at the head of the company as well as the Supervisory Board. The candidates are already in the company.
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