15 million for resignation

Volkswagen's chief executive unexpectedly leaves his post

Late on Tuesday evening, the largest European automaker, Volkswagen, made a sensational announcement: the 58-year-old chairman of the board of directors of the company, Bernd Pischetsrieder, will voluntarily leave his post by the end of the year. At the same time, the name of his successor was named - he will be the head of Audi, a company that is part of the VW concern, Martin Winterkorn. Already on November 17, the Volkswagen Supervisory Board must make a decision on this candidacy. Such a rapid pace of events raises only one question: what really happened? After all, the planned departure of managers like Pischetsrieder occurs at the age of 65 and this procedure is played out according to a pre-developed scenario, turning into a powerful PR performance for one and a half to two years.

In this case, the hasty resignation is all the more surprising. After all, Pischetsrieder’s contract, which expires in 2007, was extended ahead of schedule last spring for five years, until April 2012. Cigar-loving Pischetsrieder, whose development as a manager was spent at rival BMW, became a member of the board of Volkswagen in 2000 and was initially involved in product quality assurance at VW's Spanish subsidiary Seat. In April 2002, he replaced the head of the board of Volkswagen, Ferdinand Piech (who, in turn, took the place of chairman of the supervisory board).

Recently, their relationship has been far from cloudless, but Piech’s statements that the extension of Pischetsrieder’s contract is in question caused considerable surprise. It was then that speculation arose that Piech, who had headed Audi for a long time, was preparing his trusted manager from this concern, Martin Winterkorn, to take the place of head of Volkswagen. Piech's term as head of Volkswagen's supervisory board expires by May 2007. Recently, claims have been made against Piëch in connection with his “dual role”, since members of his family are the holders of all voting shares of another German automaker, Porsche. The famous sports car maker acquired a large stake in VW last fall, becoming its largest shareholder.

In recent years, the business of the manufacturer of the “people’s car” has not been going well. It’s not even a matter of a series of personal scandals in which top managers of the parent concern and a number of subsidiaries were involved, who, at the company’s expense, delivered prostitutes from South America for their pleasure. Today Volkswagen is going through a period of deep and painful reforms, during which 20 thousand jobs are in question - this is a fifth of the teams of six factories in western Germany. It is possible that strategists from Wolfsburg, where the concern's headquarters are located, intend to transfer a significant part of production to the company. countries with cheaper labor - to China or, say, Russia, where the assembly of Russian VW should begin near Kaluga. But no one is talking about this out loud.

The current deep reorganization of Volkswagen became necessary due to the failure of the expansionist strategy of the former chief of the board, Ferdinand Piech. His idea to penetrate the upper class of cars with his own expensive Phaeton model brought especially disastrous results. To Pischetsrieder’s attempts to change the strategy, Piëch replied: “We will not enter into such a disgusting turn.”

Another powerful irritant for Volkswagen is the ongoing dispute over the takeover of the Swedish truck manufacturer Scania, of which the Wolfsburg concern is a major shareholder. The merger of Scania with the Munich truck manufacturer MAN should create a concern to which Volkswagen will transfer its heavy truck business. The driving force behind this development of events - not yet very successful - is also Piech.

They say that the fate of Pischetsrieder was decided overnight by Ferdinand Piëch. Of course, there is no reliable evidence of this, but it is known: without Piekh’s blessing, nothing happens at VW. The most popular version of what happened today is that Piekh simply threw out the head of the board who had become objectionable to him. So undesirable that the “dictator” of Volkswagen even agreed that Pischetsrieder would leave on financial terms that were very favorable for himself and quite costly for the concern. Having resigned by December 31, Pischetsrieder will remain on Volkswagen's payroll for another five years - even if he stops working in any capacity altogether. Over the next five years, he will be paid 15 million euros.

Yuri Shpakov, Berlin