Heard the end of a news article off the radio today and I'm sure they said that VW is going to buy Porsche out because they are broke. Does anyone
know anything about this?
Smiley
Just had a poke around on the net and found these.
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2009/07/18/Report-VW-plans-complete-Porsche-...
http://www.egmcartech.com/2009/07/18/report-volkswagen-to-buy-porsche-for-112...
Smiley
That is a turnaround considering Porsche was looking at buying VW. I would have thought that was a lot of money for Porsche though.
Yogie
It's a complicated scenario. Porsche originally wanted to take a controlling share of VW (ie more than 50%) to prevent VW from being taken over by
hostile 'investment groups' and broken up. Porsche needed to protect their investments in design and manufacturing, as VW builds the Porsche Cayenne
and some of the Boxter and they have a long history of co-operation. However, VW is 20% owned by the German state of Lower Saxony, and a 1948 law
protects the state's share of VW and gives them voting rights beyond 50%.
Porsche had to borrow many billions of Euro to increase their share of VW, which was easy a couple of years ago. Still amazing that a small company
like Porsche, no matter how profitable, could consider trying to buy another company many times its own size. A mouse swallowing an elephant! But with
the current global financial crisis, Porsche can't meet its obligations. Also there is a 'family' struggle between the board of Porsche, and former
Porsche boss Ferdinand Piech (grandson of Ferdinand Porsche), who was also once the VW chairman, and the existing VW board.
A few months ago when the Porsche takeover wasn't working, I heard that the parties wanted to re-create an 'Auto Union' parent body, with the VW
makes (VW, Audi, Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti) and Porsche, under the one umbrella. Looks like this isn't going to happen either, and
VW will probably just take over ownership of Porsche. That's good, although there will still be dramas. Many of Audi's products such as the A8 and
Q7 compete directly with Porsche.
This might get ugly
http://business.smh.com.au/business/world-business/luxury-carmaker-porsche-ra...