Herbert Diess surprisingly relinquishes leadership of the VW brand top. Before that, there appear to be major conflicts between him and the Supervisory Board. The Volkswagen boss is now backed by the majority owners – combined with an appeal.
Despite handing over the top of the VW brand and the allegations to the Supervisory Board, the Porsche and Piëch families are behind CEO Herbert Diess – but warn that the construction sites at the automaker should now be urgently removed. “Mr. Diess apologized in all forms, he addressed the entire Supervisory Board,” said the majority shareholders of Volkswagen. “The capital side is still behind him.” However, it was high time to go back to work in kind. “It is also clear that the company must now get into calmer waters.”
The board accepted the apology from Diess. “Dr. Diess formally apologized to the members of the Supervisory Board for the statements and stated that they were inappropriate and wrong,” said a statement. “The members of the Supervisory Board accepted Dr. Diess’ apology and will continue to support him in his work in the future.”
VW had surprisingly announced on Monday evening that Diess would hand over the day-to-day business of the important core brand to the previous co-managing director, Ralf Brandstätter, on July 1. It is about a reorganization and “more freedom” for Diess as CEO in the control of the overall strategy, the official reason.
A little later it became known that the chairman of the board had accused individual supervisory boards of crimes and lack of integrity. In front of several thousand executives, he complained last week about the naming of critical internals regarding persistent problems in golf production or his alleged request for an early contract extension.
From the group’s environment, it was said that the statements had caused considerable irritation. This is a successful manager who has promoted important issues with electrification and digitization, the main shareholder Porsche-Holding emphasized. “But problems have to be solved.”
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