VOLKSWAGEN SET itself on course to surpass Toyota as the world’s largest car-maker last Friday when its supervisory board gave the go-ahead for the takeover of Porsche and agreed on a $38.3bn three-year investment programme.
The German car-maker said its board members approved a set of contracts that lay out details of a complex plan to merge with the family-owned company by 2011.
As a first step, VW will buy a 49.9 per cent stake in the sports car business for €3.9bn by the end of this year.
The agreement marked the beginning of a new era for Porsche’s family owners, who are poised to become the largest shareholders of a merged VW/Porsche group.
It will also bring VW a step closer to overtaking Toyota as the world’s leading car-maker by sales and profit margins by 2018.
Porsche will only add another 100,000 vehicles to VW’s more than six million annual car sales.
Meanwhile, Volkswagen last week said it would buy land, machinery and equipment from Karmann, the insolvent contract manufacturer that became one of the most prominent victims of the economic downturn in the European car industry.
VW plans to establish a new Volkswagen car manufacturing subsidiary in Osnabrück, Karmann’s hometown, to launch a new niche vehicle project there in 2011. The car-maker did not disclose the model it aims to build.
The takeover of the family-owned Karmann’s assets reignites a link with VW that dates back to the 1950s, when the contract car-maker started to build the VW Beetle-based Karmann Ghia coupé.
However, Porsche can boast of a double-digit operating profit margin in an economic crisis – although it reported a €4.4bn pre-tax loss in the past fiscal year as a result of failed bets with VW share options.
– Daniel Schäfer in Frankfurt (FT Service)