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Porsche to head €150bn car and trucks empire
By Richard Milne in Geneva
Published: March 3 2008 19:38 | Financial Times
Porsche, the sports-car maker with annual revenues of €7bn ($10.6bn), will soon control a €150bn car and trucks empire that would be Europe’s largest and include brands from Volkswagen and Audi to Bentley, Lamborghini and Scania.
Porsche on Monday received the go-ahead from an emergency meeting of its supervisory board to increase its stake in Volkswagen from 31 to more than 50 per cent.
Hours earlier, VW, Europe’s largest carmaker, agreed to buy more than two-thirds of Sweden’s Scania in addition to its controlling stake in Germany’s MAN, making the continent’s biggest truckmaker.
The twin deals reshape Europe’s automotive industry and are the crowning glory in the spectacular career of Ferdinand Piëch, the controversial chairman of both VW and MAN, as well as a controlling shareholder of Porsche.
The move brings together the two companies that Ferdinand Porsche, Mr Piëch’s grandfather and the designer of the VW Beetle, helped create and will move the Porsche 911 sports car into the same garage as the VW Golf, Skoda Octavia, Bugatti Veyron and 40-tonne Scania and MAN trucks.
Porsche, which leads the industry by profit margins, wants to challenge Toyota of Japan as the most profitable and best-selling big automotive company in the world.
Wendelin Wiedeking, Porsche’s chief executive, said: “Our aim is to create one of the strongest and most innovative automobile alliances in the world, which is able to measure up to the increased international competition.”
Porsche said it intends to keep VW as a separate brand in its new holding company, which will also control the sports-car maker’s original business.
VW’s purchase for €2.9bn of the 31 per cent in voting rights in Scania held by the powerful Wallenberg family and its Investor investment vehicle paves the way for the creation of a European truckmaker larger than Volvo or Daimler.
VW insisted it had no plans to bid for the whole of Scania or to merge it with MAN but co-operation between the Swedish and German truckmakers is now more likely. The purchase of an extra 20 per cent in VW will cost Porsche about €8bn at Monday’s prices.
But the sports-car maker has made several billion euros from share price options in VW – which it still holds – and also drew down a €10bn credit line from banks.
Porsche’s move to increase its stake in VW comes in spite of intense dissatisfaction in the company at the prospect of a new federal law to protect the interests of workers and Lower Saxony, the state where VW is based and the carmaker’s second largest shareholder.
By Richard Milne in Geneva
Published: March 3 2008 19:38 | Financial Times
Porsche, the sports-car maker with annual revenues of €7bn ($10.6bn), will soon control a €150bn car and trucks empire that would be Europe’s largest and include brands from Volkswagen and Audi to Bentley, Lamborghini and Scania.
Porsche on Monday received the go-ahead from an emergency meeting of its supervisory board to increase its stake in Volkswagen from 31 to more than 50 per cent.
Hours earlier, VW, Europe’s largest carmaker, agreed to buy more than two-thirds of Sweden’s Scania in addition to its controlling stake in Germany’s MAN, making the continent’s biggest truckmaker.
The twin deals reshape Europe’s automotive industry and are the crowning glory in the spectacular career of Ferdinand Piëch, the controversial chairman of both VW and MAN, as well as a controlling shareholder of Porsche.
The move brings together the two companies that Ferdinand Porsche, Mr Piëch’s grandfather and the designer of the VW Beetle, helped create and will move the Porsche 911 sports car into the same garage as the VW Golf, Skoda Octavia, Bugatti Veyron and 40-tonne Scania and MAN trucks.
Porsche, which leads the industry by profit margins, wants to challenge Toyota of Japan as the most profitable and best-selling big automotive company in the world.
Wendelin Wiedeking, Porsche’s chief executive, said: “Our aim is to create one of the strongest and most innovative automobile alliances in the world, which is able to measure up to the increased international competition.”
Porsche said it intends to keep VW as a separate brand in its new holding company, which will also control the sports-car maker’s original business.
VW’s purchase for €2.9bn of the 31 per cent in voting rights in Scania held by the powerful Wallenberg family and its Investor investment vehicle paves the way for the creation of a European truckmaker larger than Volvo or Daimler.
VW insisted it had no plans to bid for the whole of Scania or to merge it with MAN but co-operation between the Swedish and German truckmakers is now more likely. The purchase of an extra 20 per cent in VW will cost Porsche about €8bn at Monday’s prices.
But the sports-car maker has made several billion euros from share price options in VW – which it still holds – and also drew down a €10bn credit line from banks.
Porsche’s move to increase its stake in VW comes in spite of intense dissatisfaction in the company at the prospect of a new federal law to protect the interests of workers and Lower Saxony, the state where VW is based and the carmaker’s second largest shareholder.
