VW to discuss CEO Diess’ future on Tuesday, report says


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BERLIN – Volkswagen Group senior management will meet on Tuesday to discuss the future of CEO Herbert Diess, who is expected to remain at the helm of the automaker despite tensions over his management style, sources said on Monday.

The meeting will be attended by carmaker union boss Daniela Cavallo, as well as Wolfgang Porsche and Hans Michel Piech, who represent the VW group’s main shareholder, the Porsche-Piech clan, sources familiar with the negotiations said.

It is not yet clear whether a final decision will be made at Tuesday’s meeting. But any decision would come before a supervisory board meeting on Dec. 9 to discuss VW’s five-year spending plan, the sources said, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The aim is to announce the new board members along with details of job prospects for employees and investment plans for the group as a whole, the sources said.

“It looks like the sons are coming together,” one told Reuters.

One solution will likely include the appointment of Ralf Brandstaetter, CEO of Volkswagen’s namesake brand, to the board, people said, where he would take responsibility for Diess’ consumer brand group.

Diess and union representatives have clashed in recent weeks over his management style and the company’s ambitious electrification strategy, after the CEO warned at a meeting in October that 30,000 jobs could be lost if the process was not well managed.

Last year, Diess handed over responsibility for the Volkswagen brand to Brandstaetter after weeks of wrangling between union leaders and managers over the pace and scale of cost-cutting plans.

VW declined to comment. Porsche SE, the holding company for the Porsche-Piech family’s 53% stake in the VW Group, also declined to comment.

german newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for the first time announced plans for Tuesday’s meeting of the executive committee of the VW Group supervisory board.

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