Volkswagen's Attempting To Transform Itself Into A Fully-fledged Global Carmaker

By Author: Willsimith
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olkswagen, Europe's largest carmaker, is attempting to transform itself from an inward-looking family of European brands into a fully-fledged global carmaker. That transformation--agreed at a six-hour board meeting last year--begins at the top. Ferdinand Piech, VW's famously secretive chairman, is making way for a more internationally oriented successor: Bernd Pischetsrieder.

The former chairman of BMW, headhunted by Mr. Piech last year, has a task to modernize the Wolfsburg-based carmaker. It is an overdue process. VW, for Replica Tag Heuer years the industry benchmark, has been left behind in its brand management. Toyota of Japan has established Lexus to challenge it in the premium sector, while Ford has put together brands such as Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo in its Premier Automotive Group. General Motors is also sprucing up its European structure, restructuring Adam Opel, VW's arch-rival, and investing heavily in Saab and Cadillac to challenge VW's Audi.

Faced by such rivals, Mr. Pischetsrieder wants to restructure the company. The shake-up ...
... marks an admission that VW failed fully to exploit its wide-ranging portfolio. Its brands--carefully assembled over the past decade by Mr. Piech were dogged by accusations of product duplication, administrative overlap, a lack of financial transparency and brand identities that were fast disappearing. According to senior VW insiders, Mr. Pischetsrieder concluded that VW--while still profitable--was treading water. It needed a new format to compete in an industry where its main competitors--including Ford, General Motors and Renault-Nissan-- were aggressively restructuring and cutting costs.

Mr. Piech, who becomes chairman of VW's supervisory board on his retirement, next April, has been hinting at a broad reorganization for months. But at that meeting he left it to his successor to do the talking. "Piech made only a few comments to the board and turned the whole thing over to Pischetsrieder and he made the presentation," according to one non-executive director, who declined to be named. "It was as though he had already retired."

Certainly, the change signals a new transparency within VW, where Mr. Pischetsrieder has promised to be more open--not least with investors--than his predecessor. He has already admitted what Mr. Piech was reluctant to that VW's brand Replica Hublot Big Bang organization was failing. At the same time, investors were irritated by VW's bleak financial reporting. Some institutional shareholders even began to question the value of the long-standing share structure. But the new board decided that VW should and could do better.