Hans Dieter Pötsch (70) will be the supreme controller of the Volkswagen-Group remain. The Supervisory Board of the Wolfsburg-based car manufacturer decided on Saturday to propose to the Annual General Meeting in July that the 70-year-old should be elected for a second term. The control committee thus followed the vote of the nomination committee. In addition to Pötsch, the Supervisory Board proposed to the shareholders that Louise Kiesling be re-elected for a full term of office.
Pötsch, who had previously been Volkswagen’s CFO for a long time, has been the successor to the group’s patriarch Ferdinand Piëch at the helm of the 20-person control committee since October 2015. At the time, he was elected as a supervisor to keep the company on track, which was threatened by the diesel scandal. For a transitional period, the former IG Metall boss Berthold Huber had temporarily headed the supervisory board.
Volkswagen has survived its worst crisis so far largely unscathed. That is why the 1.90-meter man is considered irreplaceable for many in the group with often conflicting interests. The shareholders praise the skill with which the native Austrian has repeatedly mediated in the dispute between the works council and management.
Double role in the criticism
It was not until December that Pötsch succeeded in a kind of shuttle diplomacy through talks with the then works council boss Bernd Osterloh, the owner families Porsche and Piëch and the state of Lower Saxony to avert leadership chaos. At that time, CEO Herbert Diess (62) had maneuvered himself on the sidelines with the demand for a contract extension and, according to insiders, was about to be dismissed. In the end, a truce was negotiated. This made it possible for Diess to remain in office and to advance the conversion to a leading provider of climate-friendly mobility.
Pötsch is not without controversy among international investors. Fund companies and shareholder representatives rub against his dual role as chief supervisor of Volkswagen and chairman of the board of the family holding Porsche SE, which holds the majority in the Wolfsburg-based car company. Critics therefore accuse Volkswagen of failing to comply with the principles of good corporate governance.
In the course of coming to terms with the diesel scandal, Pötsch was also confronted with allegations of market manipulation. The public prosecutor’s office had targeted him as the then CFO and today’s CEO Diess because they allegedly violated their obligations to inform the capital market when the diesel scandal came to light in September 2015. The proceedings against both were discontinued against the payment of 4.5 million euros each.
Volkswagen admitted almost six years ago that it had manipulated diesel exhaust gas values using a shutdown device. This ensured that cars kept the permitted nitrogen oxide values on the test bench, but emitted many times more of these emissions on the road. There is still no end in sight to the numerous lawsuits involving public prosecutors, customers and investors around the world. The reparation for the scandal has already cost Volkswagen around 32 billion euros.
In addition, a decision on the exact amount of damages due to “Dieselgate”, which VW is demanding from ex-CEO Martin Winterkorn (74) and other managers, is likely to be made shortly.