{"id":111461,"date":"2015-04-25T17:16:18","date_gmt":"2015-04-25T17:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=111461"},"modified":"2015-04-25T17:17:07","modified_gmt":"2015-04-25T17:17:07","slug":"vw-chairman-ferdinand-piech-resigns-in-power-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2015\/04\/vw-chairman-ferdinand-piech-resigns-in-power-struggle\/","title":{"rendered":"VW chairman Ferdinand Piech resigns in power struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"
Volkswagen’s supervisory board Chairman Ferdinand Piech unexpectedly resigned on Saturday after losing a showdown he provoked with Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn.<\/p>\n
Piech, a dominant figure at VW for more than two decades and the grandson of the inventor of the VW Beetle, also resigned as member of the supervisory board and any other mandates within the Volkswagen group with immediate effect, Volkswagen said.<\/p>\n
The leadership row at VW burst into the open this month when Der Spiegel quoted Piech, the 78-year-old patriarch of the family that owns 51 percent of voting rights in VW, as saying he had “distanced” himself from Winterkorn.<\/p>\n
The comment came at a time when VW is cutting billions of euros of costs and revamping structures to boost profitability, having struggled with underperformance in the United States and declining profitability at its core autos division.<\/p>\n