The holding company that owns the majority of Volkswagen's (VW) stocks announced on October 17, Saturday that Martin Winterkorn will resign as its CEO, completely ending his formal influence over the German automaker. After stepping down as VW's chief executive on September 23 following its emissions cheating scandal last month, Winterkorn had remained the head of Porsche Automobil Holding SE, which owns over half of VW's common stock.
Porsche SE holds stock shares that are owned by the descendants of Ferdinand Porsche. He was the designer of the Volkswagen Beetle, which was featured in the Disney movie "The Love Bug" (1968) and several sequels.
Winterkorn could have influenced VW as the company tried to recover after the United States' Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that it had hacked its own diesel cars' onboard software to show fake readings during lab tests. VW announced last week that it will recall 8.5 million cars in Europe, according to The New York Times.
68-year-old Mr. Winterkorn has claimed he was unaware of the cheating software. However, critics point out that he was single-minded in making Volkswagen the world's biggest automaker, a goal it achieved during the first half year by passing Toyota in global sales.
Porsche SE stated that Winterkorn's resignation will take effect at the end of this month. Hans Dieter Pötsch will replace him as Porsche SE's CEO. Last month Matthias Müller, former head of the VW division that manufactures Porsche sports cars, replaced Winterkorn as Volkswagen CEO.
The VW cheating scandal has caused the price of the company's shares to plummet. However, Porsche SE has praised Winterkorn's "highly professional" work at the company.
Volkswagen's September sales growth in Europe and the U.S. was slower than the total automobile market. The company could reduce its number of temporary workers in order to cut costs, according to Reuters.
This video is a recap of the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal: