Volkswagen Getting Cozy with New Big Stakeholder
By Bill Visnic March 17, 2010The Volkswagen Group and its recently acquired Porsche Automobil Holding SE, owner of Porsche Cars, said this week a delegation that included the German State of Lower Saxony traveled to the Emirate of Qatar to "intensify cooperation" with the Emirate in the areas of research, development and education.
Last year, the complex financial and investment arrangement that led to VW's takeover of Porsche (after an improbable attempt at the opposite was aborted) led to Qatar becoming VW's third-largest shareholder - after the Piech family and Lower Saxony - with about 17 percent of VW. Through the deal, Qatar also holds about 10 percent of Porsche Automobil Holding SE.
Volkswagen said in a statement, "Topics discussed included possible research cooperation into new materials, energy production and storage, fuel economy optimization in engines, and the medium-term openings for establishing a vehicle materials test laboratory."
The company also said the parties expressed an interest in cooperating with the Qatar Foundation for vocational training and other education at Qatar University and the AutoUni in VW's hometown of Wolfsburg, Germany.
Martin Winterkorn, chairman of VW's board of management, said VW plans, among other things, to leverage its relationship with Qatar to further testing for all VW Group brands.
"The development of modern and resource-efficient vehicles increasingly calls for interdisciplinary cooperation in such diverse fields as electronics and materials science. Our plans to establish a test laboratory will put us in a position to test new materials under very challenging climatic conditions, thereby extending our leading position in research and development," he said.
In a separate statement today, Porsche said it is likely to lose money for fiscal year 2009/10 (which ends on July 31) on an after-tax basis, although it can boast a double-digit return on sales and an operating profit of about 329 million euros.
Porsche said "the situation in the North American market remains difficult," however, where a sales decline of 15.5 percent for the fiscal year exceeded a 5.6-percent drop in Europe. - Bill Visnic, senior editor
Photo courtesy Volkswagen Group
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Some wishful thinking here, perhaps. Germany is a R&D-rich environment, with a well-established apprenticeship program. Qatar has a Science & Technology Park, which is really just a real estate promotion as is typically found in a lot of places, and not much in the way of research capability. After all, the country has only 1.4 million people, of whom only 21 percent are actually citizens (the rest being imported labour and expats). Putting in a little lab will probably make this big investor feel better but that's about it.
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