Porsche announced yesterday that it has reached an agreement with 26 hedge funds who had sued Porsche in U.S. courts for damages allegedly suffered by Porsche’s shorting of Volkswagen shares in 2008. Under the agreements, “plaintiffs have agreed to waive any appeal of the decision of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court dismissing their complaints, and Porsche SE has agreed not to raise any statute of limitations defense with respect to claims filed by Plaintiffs before a court in Germany within 90 days.” This agreement comes after the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court at the end of December 2012 had found in favour of Porsche. It had reversed an earlier denial of Porsche’s motion to dismiss the U.S. lawsuits by the New York State Supreme Court, finding that New York is not an appropriate forum for the resolution of the hedge funds’ claims. Porsche appeared to be in a comfortable position, so why this agreement? Read More
Tag: Volkswagen
Update: Ferdinand Piech, Porsche and the Volkswagen Options
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
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.