Porsche Aims to Increase Stake in Volkswagen

Posted 03 October 2006 @ 06:01 am EET     Print     Reprint     E-Mail     Comments

FRANKFURT (AP) - Porsche, the German maker of luxury sports cars, wants to further increase its stake in Europe's biggest car maker Volkswagen, Porsche chief Wendelin Wiedeking has said.

"As soon as we get the green light from the authorities, we'll increase our stake (in VW) to 25.1 percent," he told the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel Monday.

"That will give us a blocking minority. We can do a lot with that. We'll discuss internally whether we'll increase our stake even further and have even more influence," he said.

Porsche first acquired shares in VW in autumn 2005 as a way of protecting its various partnership agreements with the car maker.

Currently, VW is protected by a special law, whereby shareholders are not allowed to hold more than 20 percent of the car maker's voting capital, even if they hold a biggest stake in the share capital.

But the so-called VW law, which effectively gives the regional state authorities of Lower Saxony where the car maker is based a golden share, has been ruled as illegal by the EU authorities. And Porsche may well turn up the pressure to have the law, originally passed in 1960, revoked.