It seemed that a decision could come within this week but according to Reuters sources the verdict on whether or not the CEO of the Volkswagen group, Herbert Diess, will remain in the saddle, would be postponed to the next. Close to the launch of the new multi-year investment plan that the supervisory board should be on Thursday 9 December. It is possible that every day that passes plays in favor of the head of the company, but the mouths are sewn up, no one dares to be too unbalanced. The head of the supervisory board Hans Dieter Poetsch has called a mediation committee on several occasions, but no solution has been reached. For the moment.
The management of the third German company by capitalization (after Sap and Siemens) worries not only the insiders and the political world (in 2022 there will be elections in Lower Saxony, the Land that hosts the group’s headquarters, in Wolfsburg) but even ordinary citizens. In the wake of the recent controversies over the leadership of CEO Herbert Diess (especially after the proposal later denied that a plan of 30,000 layoffs is necessary to restore competitiveness to the group) and the disagreements with a part of the shareholders and with the unions (the powerful Ig Metall, 90 thousand subscribers in Vw), led on the board by Daniela Cavallo, the magazine Automobile week commissioned Civey to carry out a survey on a sample of 5,000 Germans to measure the liking, or disaffection, of Diess.
The result is clear – reads the magazine’s website – because a clear majority is in favor of the discontinuity of the management of the leading European automotive group. Only 18% of respondents said they were in favor of Diess remaining chairman of Volkswagen’s board of directors, while 38% were openly against. Although the share of undecided is high (44%) a good quarter of the interviewees also stated that Diess should “under no circumstances” remain at the head of the Volkwagen.
It is interesting to note that it is the younger Germans who have a strong opinion on the manager (only 25% between 18 and 29 are undecided) while those over 64 are more doubtful, the peers of 63-year-old Diess (51% undecided ). Also interesting is the connection that pollsters have made between Diess and the political position: support is lower among supporters of the SPD (the party of the minister-president-in-office of Lower Saxony, Stephan Weil, who has had numerous frictions with Diess), Verdi, Sinistra and AfD and major supporters of FDP and Cdu / Csu.
These data suggest which is the sentiment but it is not certain that they will influence the supervisory board at its meeting on December 9th. Also because the union is not compact while the Porsche and Piech families, the large shareholders, have historically always supported the company manager in difficult moments.