Norway’s sovereign wealth fund hits out at VW leadership
AFP, Frankfurt :
The head of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund-one of the biggest capital pools in the world-on Sunday lashed Volkswagen’s ownership structure as giving too much power to family shareholders and disadvantaging minority shareholders.
As VW battles a global emissions-cheating scandal, the fund’s chief executive, Yngve Slyngstad, slammed the carmaker’s shareholder structure.
“This cannot be a role model for Germany,” Slyngstad told the Sunday newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
The Porsche and Piech families own 50.73 percent of VW’s voting shares via the holding company Porsche Automobil Holding SE, but they own only 31.5 per cent of the company equity. “I don’t think that anyone genuinely believes that the family wants to change anything about the structure,” Slyngstad told the newspaper. “We as co-owners don’t get the impression that the family wants to listen to us.”
Norway’s 734-billion-euro ($819-billion) fund holds a stake of 1.2 percent in Volkswagen. It previously criticised the German group’s shareholder structure in 2009 following the VW-Porsche takeover battle.
The embattled auto giant is currently embroiled in its deepest-ever crisis after it was forced to admit that it had fitted 11 million diesel cars worldwide with software which intentionally skews the results of emissions tests.
The head of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund-one of the biggest capital pools in the world-on Sunday lashed Volkswagen’s ownership structure as giving too much power to family shareholders and disadvantaging minority shareholders.
As VW battles a global emissions-cheating scandal, the fund’s chief executive, Yngve Slyngstad, slammed the carmaker’s shareholder structure.
“This cannot be a role model for Germany,” Slyngstad told the Sunday newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
The Porsche and Piech families own 50.73 percent of VW’s voting shares via the holding company Porsche Automobil Holding SE, but they own only 31.5 per cent of the company equity. “I don’t think that anyone genuinely believes that the family wants to change anything about the structure,” Slyngstad told the newspaper. “We as co-owners don’t get the impression that the family wants to listen to us.”
Norway’s 734-billion-euro ($819-billion) fund holds a stake of 1.2 percent in Volkswagen. It previously criticised the German group’s shareholder structure in 2009 following the VW-Porsche takeover battle.
The embattled auto giant is currently embroiled in its deepest-ever crisis after it was forced to admit that it had fitted 11 million diesel cars worldwide with software which intentionally skews the results of emissions tests.
