According to Martin Winterkorn, VW’s chief Executive, the combination of VW and Porsche is looking to take over the world’s number car maker from Toyota by 2018. He said “VW and Porsche are entering a new era — the company has the means to become number one,"
The company is currently Europe’s biggest car maker and with the tying up Porsche in their stable which has had some 4 years of internal fighting and such, the crisis is now set to end. Qatar is said to be part of the shareholders in this acquisition which is expected to complete in 2 year’s time.
The crisis began back in 2005 when VW and Porsche were reported to be in a take over war with Porsche turning to be the likely victor when they tried to inject efforts into minimizing emission of carbon dioxide in its product lines to meet the anti-pollution legislation which is set to be enforced in 2012. To do this, Porsche intended to use the Polo and Skoda to replace its current high gas-spewing models. Then, Porsche tried but failed to buy 75% of VW shares which was widely affected by the financial crisis which saw them ended in a huge debt pile amounting to some €9billion. They had 12,000 employees while VW boasts 360,000.
VW, on the other hand had IG Metall and the their own Works Council to overturn Porsche’s takeover bid to make it theirs. Wendelin Wiedeking, the chief executive of the maker of the trademark 911 cars inflicting the anger of VW when he termed them “Scared Cows”. Ferdinand Piech, the chairman of the VW Supervisory Board too took it upon himself to vent off Wiedeking’s attempt, which he did.
VW has a list of products under its line which includes Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Seat, Scania, Skoda and now Porsche, which makes it the biggest car maker in the region. According to an analyst, "One problem I see is that too much of the liquidity that Volkswagen still has will be spent on the deal. In that time, VW will have quite a few expenses that we do not know about now. In addition, the group needs to invest heavily in future technology. VW has a strategic size that is extremely important in global competition. That is why I see the future of the company very optimistically."
