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 The 62-year-old company veteran will be chosen at a supervisory
board meeting to replace Martin Winterkorn, who resigned on
Wednesday and said VW needed a fresh start, a source close to the
matter told Reuters.
The board, meeting at the German carmaker's Wolfsburg headquarters,
will also dismiss the head of its U.S. business and two top
engineers, a senior source said. Another said VW brand development
chief Heinz Jakob Neusser would be fired too.
The world's largest automaker is under pressure to show it is can
get to grips with the biggest business-related scandal in its
78-year history.
Volkswagen shares have plunged as much as 40 percent, wiping tens of
billions of euros off its market value, since U.S. regulators said
on Friday it had admitted to programming diesel cars to detect when
they were being tested and alter the running of their engines to
conceal their true emissions.
The scandal has spread, with Germany's transport minister saying on
Thursday the company had also cheated tests in Europe -- where its
sales are much higher than in the United States -- and regulators
and prosecutors across the world investigating.
The wider car market has been rocked, with manufacturers fearing a
drop in sales of diesel cars and tighter regulations, while
customers and dealers are furious that Volkswagen has yet to say
whether it will have to recall any cars.
"VW needs to be very open about what has happened, how it was
possible that this could happen to make sure that this never happens
again in the future," said a leading VW shareholder, underlining the
importance of the meeting.
"These are priorities that should override all other considerations
at the moment."
The task facing Mueller, if his selection is confirmed, is enormous.
The company said on Tuesday some 11 million vehicles worldwide were
fitted with the software that allowed it to cheat the U.S. tests.
Analysts hope that on Friday it may at last say which models and
construction years are affected, and whether cars will need to be
refitted.
They also expect it to announce a full investigation of the scandal,
to be carried out by an external firm, and to give the outlines of a
new management structure likely to be less centralized, but with a
clearer system of checks.
NEED TO BE "BIG AND BOLD"
Volkswagen has long been seen as a symbol of German industrial
prowess and the auto industry is one of the country's major
employers and a key source of export income.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged VW to act quickly to restore
confidence as motor dealers and consumers seek more information
about the scandal.
Evercore ISI analyst Arndt Ellinghorst said he would welcome the
appointment of Mueller, a former head of product strategy and close
to the Piech-Porsche family that controls Volkswagen.
"He's good choice, even though he may be seen as a transitionary CEO
until another internal candidate such as VW brand CEO (Herbert)
Diess has earned their stripes," he said.
But Bernstein's Max Warburton questioned whether a man who has spent
more than three decades at the company was the right man to signal a
break with the past. He favours Diess, a former research and
development chief of rival BMW who was hired to run the VW brand in
December.
"VW needs to think big and bold," Warburton said, urging the new CEO
to offer to buy back and scrap almost 500,000 diesel cars sold in
the United States, which would cost about $6 billion, as well as
suspend the 100 engineers most closely associated with the affected
engines and software.
Environmentalists have long complained that carmakers game the
vehicle testing regime to exaggerate the fuel-efficiency and
emissions readings of their vehicles.
The International Council on Clean Transportation, one of the
research groups that helped uncover Volkswagen's deception, has
published new data showing carbon dioxide emissions in European road
tests were on average 40 percent higher than the laboratory results
advertised in car sales literature.
European politicians on Wednesday voted to speed up a tightening of
testing rules.
(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaus in Europe, Asia and
Americas; Writing by Mark Potter; Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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