VW dismissing CEO over emissions scandal
Volkswagen will dismiss Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn, according to reports in a German newspaper, after the carmaker admitted to cheating US vehicles emissions tests and said 11 million of its cars could be affected worldwide.
The Tagesspiegel newspaper, cited unnamed sources on Volkswagen’s supervisory board, stating that Winterkorn would be replaced by Matthias Mueller, the head of Porsche sports car business.
A Volkswagen spokesman described the report as ‘ridiculous’. A spokesman for Porsche said Mueller was currently at a Volkswagen board meeting at its headquarters in Wolfsburg.
Shares in Volkswagen plunged almost 20 per cent on Monday after it admitted using software that deceived US regulators measuring emissions in some of its diesel cars.
The stock tumbled another 20 percent to a four-year low today (22 September 2015) after the company said it would set aside €6.5 billion ($7.3 billion) in its third-quarter accounts to help cover the costs of the biggest scandal in its 78-year-history, blowing a hole in analysts’ profit forecasts.
Volkswagen also warned that sum could rise, adding diesel cars with so-called Type EA 189 engines built into about 11 million Volkswagen models worldwide had shown a ‘noticeable deviation’ in emission levels between testing and road use.
