Ferdinand Piech has not been granted admission to appeal (Nichtzulassungsbeschwerde) the judgment of the Stuttgart Court of Appeals (Oberlandesgericht) of February 2012. In this judgment, the Stuttgart court found that Mr. Piech had violated material fiduciary duties (Kardinalpflichten) which he owed to Porsche as a member of its supervisory board: His public statements showed that he failed to exercise proper control over the Volkswagen share option arrangements that were entered into as part of Porsche’s attempt to take over Volkswagen. If Mr. Piech could not understand what was going on, he should have investigated further, and potentially even tried to stop these transactions. Read More
Tag: Porsche
The Porsche/Volkswagen Saga – News From Braunschweig, Stuttgart and New York
We have posted here on the securities litigation triggered by Porsche’s attempt to take over Volkswagen and covered some of its different angles. Things appeared to look not too bad for Porsche in the first court hearing in the German litigation in June 2012. Over the summer, news then were less favorable to Porsche: Read More
The Porsche/Volkswagen Saga – News From the Braunschweig Court House
In the law suits brought by financial investors against Porsche in conjunction with its attempt to take over Volkswagen, a first hearing took place at the Braunschweig District Court (Landgericht) today. Bloomberg Law was brave enough to cover the story yesterday, ahead of the hearing, and to make predictions, namely that it would be hard for the plaintiffs to convince to court – rightly pointing to the limitations on finding hard facts to support their case under German procedural rules, in the absence of discovery or disclosure.
And according to today’s report in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bloomberg’s assessment was pretty much on target: The judge’s initial evaluation of the case before him was, according to Frankfurter Allgemeine, that plaintiffs’ arguments had no legal basis, neither in the German civil code nor in the securities laws. The facts pleaded by the plaintiffs were not sufficient to support a cause of action in tort (vorsätzliche sittenwidrige Schädigung).
The next hearing has been scheduled for September 19, 2012. Watch this space.
The Porsche/Volkswagen Saga – News from the Legal Battlefields
Thanks to Porsche’s attempt to take over Volkswagen with an elaborate option strategy, high-stakes shareholder suits have finally come to Germany. International financial investors have brought actions against Porsche and Volkswagen, seeking damages in the order of several billions. The claimants argue, in short, that they suffered losses when Porsche cornered the market with the use of fancy derivatives and failed to disclose the true position it had taken. Read More