Wendelin Wiedeking in court in March 2016
According to the court, the questioning of the ex-manager did not result in any indication that they knew about the illegal defeat devices or should have known about them.
(Photo: Reuters)
Porsche SE has prevailed on an important point in the legal dispute with investors over damages in connection with the diesel scandal at Volkswagen. According to the judges, the major VW shareholder was not obliged to inform the capital market as early as June 2008 about the exhaust gas manipulation in VW diesel vehicles, the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart declared on Wednesday.
The interrogation of the executive board members of Porsche SE (PSE) who were in office until the end of 2009, Wendelin Wiedeking and Holger Haerter, would not have revealed any indication that they knew about the illegal defeat devices or should have known about them.
Hundreds of investors complain that Porsche SE informed the capital market too late about the diesel emissions scandal at Volkswagen that was uncovered in September 2015. They suffered losses due to the purchase of PSE shares that was too expensive. The volume of the lawsuit amounts to 929 million euros. The Higher Regional Court decision in the investor test case can be contested before the Federal Court of Justice.
Model Claimant is a pension fund in the British city of Wolverhampton. According to the investors, the PSE should have provided information about Dieselgate both in the early days of the emissions scandal in 2008, when the defeat devices were installed, and in the phase of discovery by US authorities in 2014 and 2015.
In principle, the PSE has an obligation to publish information about events in its main investment in Volkswagen, the Higher Regional Court explained. It also had to be clarified whether the knowledge of the VW board also had to be known to the management of PSE.
The background is the peculiarity that some top managers traditionally have dual functions at Volkswagen and its largest shareholder PSE. At the time of the diesel scandal, former VW boss Martin Winterkorn was also CEO of Porsche SE. In the opinion of the Higher Regional Court, the knowledge of PSE did not have to be attributed because Volkswagen had a duty of confidentiality for the members of the Board of Management. It can therefore remain open whether the circumstances surrounding the uncovering of the diesel scandal in 2014 and 2015 constituted insider information.
There is also a model investor case against Volkswagen for investor lawsuits at the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court. VW had illegal defeat devices installed in around eleven million diesel cars worldwide, which led authorities to believe that they were complying with nitrogen oxide limits on the test bench, while pollutant emissions were much higher on the road.
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