VW board committee to discuss CEO’s future on Tuesday – sources

By Jan Schwartz

HAMBURG (Reuters) -Volkswagen’s supervisory board executive committee will meet on Tuesday to discuss the future of Chief Executive Herbert Diess, who is likely to remain at the helm of the carmaker despite tensions over his management style, sources said on Monday.

It was not clear whether any decision would be made at Tuesday’s meeting, to be attended among others by works council head Daniela Cavallo and representatives of the majority shareholder families, Hans Michel Piech and Wolfgang Porsche, the sources with knowledge of the negotiations said.

But any decision would come before a Dec. 9 supervisory board meeting to discuss Volkswagen’s five-year spending plan, they added, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Volkswagen and top shareholder Porsche SE declined to comment. German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung first reported plans for an executive committee meeting on Tuesday.

Diess and union representatives have clashed in recent weeks over his management style and electrification strategy, after the CEO warned at a previous supervisory board meeting that 30,000 jobs could be lost if the process was not managed well.

The goal of current negotiations is to announce a series of new board members alongside details on job prospects for employees and investment plans for the group as a package, the sources said.

“It looks as though the threads are coming together,” one of the people said.

A solution will likely include the appointment of Ralf Brandstaetter, CEO of Volkswagen’s namesake brand, to the management board, the people said, where he would take over responsibility for the mass-market brand group from Diess.

Diess last year ceded responsibility for the Volkswagen brand to Brandstaetter after weeks of squabbling between the company’s powerful labour leaders and managers over the pace and scale of cost cutting plans.

(Writing by Victoria Waldersee and Christoph SteitzEditing by Mark Potter)