But the wound will be long to heal and want to be reopen

Ferdinand Porsche would have dreamed. If he was still alive, based Porsche in 1931 and designed the Volkswagen, then become the Ladybug would soon his two creations combine to form a European automobile giant. The only one able to compete with Toyota in the next ten years. It is now more as a matter of days before that the manufacturer of sports cars convert its options to make the majority of Volkswagen.

But the two partners have yet to agree on the fields of cooperation and the rules of governance, while power struggles continued to poison relations between Stuttgart and Wolfsburg. A first match against Wendelin Wiedeking, CEO of Porsche, Bernd Osterloh, the President of the Enterprise Committee of Volkswagen, which sees the social achievements of the threatened employees. A second issue is the "Volkswagen law", which protected until the constructor for a hostile takeover last year, by prohibiting any shareholder to exercise more than 20 of the voting rights. The European Commission and Porsche want total deletion, but the Land of Lower Saxony, supported by Berlin, wants to retain a blocking minority. The whole is crowned by rivalries between the cousins Piëch and Porsche, disagree on the future role of Wendelin Wiedeking. At the end of a meeting at the Summit, October 19, two family branches seem to of course near their views. But the wound will be long to heal, and want to be reopen...

The Technology Division in question

"The current climate of distrust excludes the implementation of cooperation for the moment." "To preserve the success of the alliance, the parties must reach a compromise," said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, Professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen. For its part, Jochen Gehrke, analyst at Deutsche Bank, has revised downwards its expectations in terms of synergy. "When Porsche took his first interest in Volkswagen in 2005, we had realized that the management was synergies of 250 to 300 million euros." "We permanent debate on the influence to the level of the Supervisory Board has established many projects to the judgment," he said.

First area of uncertainty: the technology sharing, including Audi, a subsidiary of Volkswagen. Porsche, which already cooperates with VW in the hybrid and the production of the Cayenne, sees the brand with the four rings access to technologies (electronics, Diesel engines...) that he could develop only with his best 100,000 sold each year. But Audi would like to keep the same freedom as in the past, "controlled competition", in the words of Carl Hahn, former Volkswagen boss. "It is not really models policy which concerns us, says an employee of Audi, because, in my view, even close cars like the 911 and the Audi R8 are not really competing. '. But we would like to know how technology transfer will take place and, especially, who pays.

Second front, governance issues: what powers given to the holding umbrella groups "The European company should give strategic directions, i.e. decide what models made, for which markets and with what objectives of profitability." "Wendelin Wiedeking and its financial Director, Holger Härter, should play the lead role", said Stefan Bratzel, expert of the FHDW Center of Automotive. But how to marry two antagonistic corporate cultures where it is known that it is often the first source of failure in the mergers and acquisitions