To what extent can Volkswagen AG benefit from the Volkswagen AG and Porsche AG proposed merger? (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Operations Research, grade: 2,0, , language: English, abstract: This project aims to investigate the benefits of the proposed merger for Volkswagen AG. Volkswagen and Porsche have merged as a sole group under the management of Volkswagen. VW has purchased 41% of Porsche and over the next years, the firms will integrate and merge with each other even closer. Porsche will keep its own brand and still operate independently to some extent.

The proposed Porsche and Volkswagen merger started in late summer 2009. Since I am a car enthusiast, I wanted to look at a car manufacturing company. Watching the news from Germany almost every day, I familiarized myself with the issue between Volkswagen and Porsche. Being a Porsche fan, I wanted to see what will happen with Porsche and investigated it. The German company Volkswagen AG is Europe's biggest carmaker and very well known throughout the world. Volkswagen AG owns nine brands including the own Volkswagen (VW) brand. Volkswagen's product portfolio consists of the brands Audi, Bentley, Skoda, Lamborghini and more. Each brand has its own character and operates as an independent entity on the market (Group).

This suggests that each brand caters for a specific market. Porsche AG is one of the most profitable manufacturers of the luxurious sports cars, Porsche. Porsche's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Wendelin Wiedeking made Porsche so successful until now. After Porsche obtained more shares of Volkswagen, Wiedeking wanted to take complete control over VW. This seemed impossible to many, as Volkswagen makes sales of $151 billion per year, which is about 16 times the size of Porsche, which generates sales of about $9.3 billion (Boston). Beginning in 2005, Porsche acquired a voting stake of 50.8% in Volkswagen. Porsche planned to increase these to 75% until the end of 2009 (Boston).

However, everything turned out the other way, VW took most control over Porsche and Porsche was forced to merge with VW. Porsche AG created these problems themselves by being too ambitious and ignorant to political relationships in order to successfully take control over a giant like VW. Wiedeking's disastrous attempt to buy VW has led him to resign as the CEO of the Porsche AG at the end of 2009 leaving Porsche with a debt of $13 billion. VW saw this as an opportunity to take control of Porsche. The battle has been going for over three and a half years.