VW labour leader sees Piech staying chairman

March 23, 2011

Influential Volkswagen labor leader Bernd Osterloh expects shareholders next year will grant Chairman Ferdinand Piech a further extension to his mandate on the supervisory board.

"Yes, I am clearly for an extension of his mandate. And I expect that it will come to that. No one else is discussing anything different," Osterloh said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published on March 19.

Piech is widely considered to be the undisputed leader of Volkswagen, and he engineered the 2009 replacement of Wendelin Wiedeking as CEO of Porsche Automobil Holding SE through his own top lieutenant, VW CEO Martin Winterkorn.

The mandate of Piech, who will turn 74 this April, is due to end next year. He also serves as chairman of German truckmaker MAN SE, in which VW is the largest shareholder with nearly 30 percent of the votes.

Since almost all the voting shares in the company are in friendly hands -- the Porsche and Piech families, the Qatar Investment Authority and the German state of Lower Saxony -- an extension at next year's annual general meeting is almost certain.

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