Buhlmann's Corner

Have you ever met your alter ego?

I called mine on the phone just the other day. The first thing he asked me, with a hint of archness, was why all this should be happening to the company in such perfect time for the meeting of the Supervisory Board, just before finalising the renewal terms of the executive board chairman’s contract. Generally speaking, he remarked, administrative bodies (and that of the United States is no exception) are all very slow but, he continued, they grind (in the true sense of the word) exceeding small.

No way, I replied. I don’t buy it either. Considering the frosty rapport between Ferdinand Piech and Martin Winterkorn , the way the events unfolded could only have been coincidental. And yet, he mused, thinking aloud, what on earth could be important enough for a person who already has a sizeable chunk of Volkswagen in hand do such a thing? Why should he still be trying to get his own back if it meant slashing his wealth (calculated) by billions of Euros. Do you reckon, he continued, that now that, his wealth is arithmetically down to single figures this could have triggered an emotional landslide. No way, I countered, Ferdinand Piech is an engineer, and engineers are not given to wearing their heart on their sleeve.

It was then that I noticed more than a whiff of cynicism creeping into his words. Imagine, for a minute, he said, that I am he and that one fine day I take a look at my fortune. That was when my pragmatism gave me a prod and I realised that “my fortune by then grown so vast / / was fading I’d no idea so fast”, its very size inuring me to matters arithmetical. It might even occur to me that my share in grandfather’s factory had remained the same even though the numbers were lower. Right?

Come on! Are you trying to tell me that this man detonated the bombshell that led to the nosedive on the stock exchange and then recomposed the distance between him and the CEO to buy up some more stock that at that point was going for a song – all without any talk of insider trading ? Because if it had been insider trading he would have had to sell off his shares in August and then, use those same funds ... in October to ....

Well, you know, remarked my Alter Ego, this could all just have been a ruse for grandson to get an increased ownership of grandfather’s factory without having to shell out a single Euro in capital. A boardroom seat can solve all sorts of problems and more shares gives him the power to get his wife elected to the chair of the Supervisory Board. Politically speaking, it is an exact reflection of what makes the world go round. Just then, though, we got cut off, my mobile had run out of credit. Line of credit revoked because of losses on the stock market. Pity; my next call was going to be to Martin Winterkorn. Just to say “Hey Joe! Haven’t we been here before?”

Now we’re all up the creek:

The elderly, honourable trade unionist sits at the head of the table; he’s going to have to pass the sceptre to the former treasurer who, with no regard to cooling off procedures, will be overseeing his ex-boss, who, in turn is riding a carthorse being made to gambol like a foal. Who will have the boldness to open their mouth at the next Supervisory or executive board meeting …. Best wait for someone with years and years of experience to come along and sort things out just like he did once before.

Volkswagen builds cars for the people and a factory for grandfather’s grandson.