|
Europe's largest automaker needs to prepare for what will likely
be a stormy annual shareholders' meeting in April, and is
looking at how to account for the scandal in its 2015 results,
due to be published in March, one of the people said.
The German company is mired in the biggest business crisis in
its history after admitting in September that it rigged diesel
emissions tests in the United States and cheat software could be
installed in 11 million vehicles worldwide.
With U.S. customers still in the dark about when and how their
cars will be fixed and hundreds of lawsuits looming, the
executive committee of the company's supervisory board will meet
next Wednesday, the people said, speaking on condition of
anonymity because the meeting has not been made public.
"In this special situation it would not be enough for the
executive committee to only meet ahead of a supervisory board
meeting, or every six to eight weeks," the first person said.
The six-member panel includes VW's Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch;
Joerg Hofmann, chairman of the IG Metall union; works council
boss Bernd Osterloh; Stephan Weil, prime minister of VW's home
region of Lower Saxony; deputy works council chief Stephan Wolf;
and Wolfgang Porsche, chairman of top shareholder Porsche SE.
VW said last week an investigation into the scandal by U.S. law
firm Jones Day was proceeding "at full speed" and it planned to
give the first public results at shareholders' annual general
meeting (AGM) on April 21.
"The pressure to clear up (the scandal) is extremely high," said
Stefan Bratzel, head of the Center of Automotive Management
think-tank near Cologne.
"There were too many cheers after the technical fixes for
European cars were presented. There was an impression that the
job was largely done. But that's far from true," Bratzel said.
Besides reviewing the state of investigations and preparing for
the AGM, VW's 20-member supervisory board will also revisit 2016
spending plans drawn up last November when it meets on Feb. 26,
the people said.
(Reporting by Andreas Cremer, Jan Schwartz and Ilona Wissenbach;
Editing by Mark Potter)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
|
