Porsche Holding – Volkswagen deal through

Wolfsburg: The family shareholders of Porsche Holding Gesellschaft mbH, Salzburg, have resolved to exercise the put option to sell to Volkswagen the operating business of Porsche Holding Salzburg (PHS). The put option to this effect was exercised on November 10, 2010. The transfer of the automobile trade company will take place at a fixed price of €3.3 billion, probably during the first half of 2011 but no later than September 30, 2011. This decision by the Porsche and Piëch families is a clear commitment to implementing the integrated automotive group. The sale of the automobile trading company was already foreseen in the comprehensive agreement concluded last year. For Volkswagen, the acquisition now agreed significantly strengthens the Company’s own trade activities. “Porsche Holding Salzburg is a highly profitable and efficient automobile trade company. PHS sets the benchmark for our industry in key areas of the automobile trade such as customer orientation,” Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn, CEO of Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft, commented. “PHS will retain its status as a single organizational unit with its successful business model as well as all assets and all brands. At the same time we will be significantly strengthening our own trade activities in major markets and regions. Moreover, by combining processes in relevant sectors such as financial services or IT we are also leveraging synergies and raising our performance in automobile trading, thereby making an appreciable contribution to achieving the targets of the Volkswagen Group’s Strategy 2018,” Winterkorn continued. PHS is Europe’s most successful private automobile trading company and has a particularly strong presence in Austria, Western Europe and South Eastern Europe as well as China. In the 2009/10 financial year (to March 31), unit sales of 421,000 new vehicles generated sales revenue of €12.2 billion, with profitability higher than the market average. PHS employs some 20,300 people.