Volkswagen appoints new CEO

Volkswagen AG has appointed Porsche brand chief Matthias Mueller as its new CEO and announced the departure of top executives in a sweeping overhaul to begin repairing the carmaker’s image tarnished by rigged emissions tests.

The 20-person supervisory board began its meeting Friday morning to vote on naming Mueller, a company veteran for four decades who enjoys the support of the family that controls VW as well as the automaker’s influential labor leader.

The 62-year-old Porsche chief would take charge as Volkswagen seeks to regain the trust of consumers and regulators after admitting to rigging diesel engines to circumvent pollution controls in the U.S. The crisis wiped about 20 billion euros ($22.4 billion) off VW’s market value this week, forcing Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn to step down on Wednesday as the scandal widened and opened the door for the exit of other top managers.

Read also: Volkswagen budgets $7.3bn to confront scandal

Like his predecessor, Mueller is a long-serving Volkswagen employee, joining the Audi division as a toolmaking apprentice in the early 1970s. Mueller, who studied information technology, would be the first non-engineer to run VW since 1992 when Carl Hahn retired from the post. Hahn studied economics.

To repair VW’s image, Mueller will have to move quickly to get into the public’s eye — a task better suited for his cool, cosmopolitan demeanor than that of the stiff and autocratic Winterkorn.

Credit: Bloomberg

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