Volkswagen's Oliver Blume said four German plants have no path to profit or earnings. Jens Weidmann said UniCredit's 48 per cent of the bank Commerzbank, enough to control resolutions, should prompt a takeover-law review.
In an interview posted on Volkswagen's intranet, chief executive Oliver Blume said Volkswagen and the German car industry are living through the biggest upheaval in their history. No closure has been decided, but he repeated that no path to profitability, and no earnings path, is currently visible for Emden, Hannover, Zwickau and Neckarsulm. He said Europe carries overproduction of 500,000 vehicles a year.[1]
Blume called closing factories the last and most expensive solution, saying that where car production may stop the company is looking at other industrial uses, with talks advanced with defence firms over the Osnabrück plant. The group has already ordered 50,000 job cuts and reached agreements with 37,000 employees, a large employment reduction. IG Metall head Christiane Benner sharply criticised management on 21 August and promised to resist closures.[1]
Commerzbank supervisory-board chair Jens Weidmann said UniCredit reaching 48 per cent, enough to control shareholder resolutions, raises questions about German takeover law, and suggested lawmakers may want to examine it. He said UniCredit achieved a majority with a financially unattractive offer and without paying an appropriate control premium. Fewer than 18 per cent of the roughly 73 per cent of available shares were tendered by institutional and retail investors, with the remainder coming from UniCredit-linked banks. Weidmann said the federal government's stake in the bank was part of a rescue measure and should eventually be withdrawn, but that in the current phase it makes sense for the state to remain a shareholder to represent Germany's interests as a business location. The comments were made to Sueddeutsche Zeitung.[2]
