In year 2009 the car industry in Germany had seen the climax of the race between Porsche and Volkswagen, where the smaller company Porsche tried to take over Europe’s biggest car manufacturer Volkswagen. Now the race is almost finished with the winner being Volkswagen, currently in the process to integrate Porsche in their conglomerate as 10th brand by this year.
Ferdinand Piëch, the Volkswagen Chairman of the Supervisory board was awarded last November as the man of the year 2011 by the automobile magazine [1]. Meanwhile 73 years old Ferdinand Piëch has a fabulous reputation in the car manufacturing industry. In his earlier career he was chief developer of Audi and from 1993 until 2002 he was the CEO of the Volkswagen AG. Since then he is the chairman of the supervisory board.
His grandfather is no one else than Ferdinand Porsche, the founder of Porsche and the family dynasty Porsche and Piëch [4]. Looking into the family history the two branches have often been fighting about the influence in Porsche. The Spiegel article [2] describes several open and hidden fights between the two sides of the family. In 1972, when Ferdinand Piëch was about to promoted to CEO of Porsche, the families didn’t agree on the company’s strategy and as a compromise all family members had to leave the company, including Ferdinand Piëch who ended up in Audi.
He always had been a controversial leader, on the one hand side insistently pushing new technological developments and on the other side being tough with the management team working under him.
In the year 2005 Porsche’s CEO Wendelin Wiedeking initiated buying shares in the third biggest [9] car manufacturer Volkswagen and constantly was increasing its shares over time. Although that intention had previously been demented, in October 2008 Porsche surprisingly announced to increase the shares to a majority level which in fact would have brought VW under full control of Porsche.
Porsche, although publicly listed, was...
