'Porsche prevents Volkswagen from takeover'

German luxury carmaker Porsche prevented a hostile takeover attempt at Volkswagen when it bought a stake in the world's fourth largest carmaker, Porsche's chief executive told Der Spiegel.
"Guaranteed - we broke up a possible deal for some investment bankers," Wendelin Wiedeking said in an interview with the German weekly magazine to be published on Saturday.
"When we were buying, many others were also buying, and to a great extent in fact and at prices that we never would have wanted to pay." When asked then whether he meant that hostile investors were just about to buy large stakes in Volkswagen, the Porsche CEO replied: "That was definitely the case (and) we prevented it."
Although Germany's Volkswagen Law prevents any one single shareholder from exercising more than 20 percent of his or her voting rights, it cannot prevent a group of investors acting in concert to effectively launch a hostile take-over of the company.
The European Commission is suing Germany at the European Court of Justice in an attempt to finally topple the VW law.
Wiedeking also told Der Spiegel there was little cause for concern over a potential conflict of interest when Porsche - VW's largest single investor - eventually sits on its supervisory board.
"Volkswagen sells only 2.8 percent of its products in the same segments as Porsche. An overlap first starts to become relevant for antitrust authorities when it is 25 to 33 percent," Wiedeking said.
Porsche would even greet deeper ties between VW and US-German carmaker DaimlerChrysler, he added.
"I look at it positively. If a further co-operation were to come about here, I would welcome it since that would stabilise the company and earn more money," the Porsche CEO said.
Wiedeking declined to comment on whether Porsche would oppose an independent VW chairman after recent criticism over the dual role of Ferdinand Piech, the current VW chairman and a key Porsche shareholder. But he said he was in no rush to immediately place Porsche representatives on the board before Volkswagen's annual general meeting on May 3 next year.
"We have not yet internally come to a definitive decision (on whether to call an extraordinary shareholders meeting). I believe in approaching this issue calmly," Wiedeking said.
The Porsche CEO reaffirmed that he himself, and not Piech, had hatched the idea to take an almost 20 percent stake in Volkswagen nearly a year ago when VW shares traded between 32 and 35 euros.
Shares in Volkswagen were changing hands at three-year highs upwards of 50 euros in the days running up to Porsche's late September announcement on its intention to buy the VW stake.