The automotive world was taken by surprise on October 17, 2007, when Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking announced in an interview on the Sunday Times that the Stuttgart sports carmaker was ready to take over VW.
Wiedeking expected the so-called “Volkswagen law”, which stipulated that no shareholder could have more than 20 percent of the voting rights of Europe’s number one car manufacturer, to be ruled illegal by the European Court of Justice.
However, things didn’t turn out as Wiedeking expected and in 2010, 18 hedge funds filed a US$2 billion lawsuit in the U.S. accusing the company and its former CEO (Wiedeking) and CFO (Holger Härter) for manipulating the market and trying to cover up the losses Porsche suffered after VW shares soared.
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