FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Volkswagen’s Chief Executive Herbert Diess has asked the company’s owning families to back a contract extension in a bid to break a management deadlock at the world’s largest carmaker, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The appeal for support from the Piech and Porsche families, who control a majority voting stake at the carmaker, comes after Diess was forced to relinquish management responsibility for the VW brand in June to retain his job as group CEO.
“He is bringing the issue to a head,” one of the sources said.
Volkswagen declined to comment. The owning families declined to comment, the company’s works council and the German state of Lower Saxony, which owns a VW stake, declined to comment.
(Reporting by Jan Schwartz and Edward Taylor; Editing by Riham Alkousaa)
