Volkswagen allocates 20 billion bridge loan to 13 banks

Wolfgang Porsche, the chairman of family-owned Porsche Automobil Holding SE, will address thousands of workers in Wolfsburg at 9.30 a.m. local time (08:30 GMT), The Sunday Business Post reported Tuesday. Volkswagen has lost about 11 billion euros in market capitalization since its cheating became public September 18. Conspicuously absent was Wolfgang Porsche’s cousin, Ferdinand Piech, VW’s former chairman.

Union and labour leaders had pleaded with the ownership group to give Volkswagen’s workforce a commitment in the lead up to an enforced two-week Christmas shut down, especially with its United States sales falling 25 per cent in November.

Volkswagen Chief Executive Matthias Muellersaid the emissions issue was a catalyst for change.

Wolfgang Porsche is the grandson of the creator of the Volkswagen Beetle. Unlike Hans-Michel Piech, who spent his career in boardrooms, engineering centres and assembly plants, he has mostly lived quietly in Austria. “The Porsche and Piech families stand behind Volkswagen and Wolfsburg as its headquarters”. There he has an organic dairy farm. They control 52 percent of Volkswagen’s voting stock through Stuttgart-based Porsche Holding.

The family’s silence had exacerbated insecurity among workers as evidence grows that the emissions manipulation is starting to hurt sales.

The company will shut its production complex in Wolfsburg, one of the largest in the world, for two weeks during the Christmas holiday to forestall the bloating of vehicle inventories.

The scandal has widened, with the German automaker subsequently revealing that it had also understated carbon dioxide emissions, including those for gasoline engines, for up to 800,000 vehicles.

German regulators have determined that the now-infamous emissions control software Volkswagen placed in millions of diesel vehicles is an illegal test-cheating defeat device under European standards, according to Tuesday media reports.

“Volkswagen’s fraudulent scheme was facilitated and aided and abetted by defendant Bosch, which created the software used in Volkswagen’s defeat device”, said the 56-page lawsuit, which accuses the parties of violating civil racketeering laws and consumer fraud.