Ferdinand Piech, the autocratic and highly successful chairman of Volkswagen Group AG, resigned suddenly on Saturday after he failed to engineer the dismissal of chief executive Martin Winterkorn.
The timing of the move was a surprise but the decision was not – I, for one, recommended Volkswagen to hasten the departure of Piech in these pages earlier this month.
Piech may now be irritated about the fracas of the past few weeks, he can nevertheless look back at a period of growth at the VW Group that is now one of the biggest carmakers in the world and counts
In 2008, Piech played a key role in a rare power struggle during which cash-rich Porsche tried to acquire the rest of VW, only to end up being absorbed by VW itself. Two former Porsche executives even faced criminal charges.
Winterkorn was already Volkswagen CEO then. He also clinched the final takeover of Scania.
The problem with Piech is his character. He is very austere and therefore not very popular. Respected but not hailed. I was a member of a jury selecting the personality of the year for the auto industry and several years in a row the name of Piech was discussed, due to his contribution to the industry, and rejected because of his arrogance.
His wife Ursula has also resigned from the Volkswagen board.
Volkswagen has appointed Berthold Huber, a labor union official, as interim chairman.
The group can now do two things – it can search for a chairman or it can select a new chief executive and allow Winterkorn to become chairman.
What is for sure is that there needs to be clarity about who is in charge as the group still faces several problems, including the slow sales in the United States, a cheaper brand positioned below Skoda, high manufacturing costs, emerging new energy technologies and the position on emerging markets.
Battling on a global market against the likes of GM, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler,
