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The story of how BMW came to own the name, and VW the company is hilarious and includes a law firm having to pay lots of money to VW.

by pintxo 3y ago

piva00 3y ago
VW's history with corporate structure and brands is a clusterfuck in general, haha, the ownership structure between Volkswagen AG, Porsche SE and Porsche AG is pretty convoluted, then you add other VW-owned brands: Audi which has Lamborghini, Ducati, and Bentley as subsidiaries, Bentley itself has been owner and subsidiary of Rolls-Royce through its history, ending up owning the brand for cars lately. If anyone has ever seen a timeline diagram of their corporate structure I'd be very interested to see, just to get a sense of how much more of a clusterfuck it is than the tidbits I know about.
- adolph 3y ago
  Don't forget the Rimac-Bugatti structure: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/41414/rimac-just-bought-bugatti-heres-why-its-a-huge-ev-bet-for-vw https://www.thedrive.com/tech/41414/rimac-just-bought-bugatt... Volkswagen group has been said to have slated the sell-off of Ferdinand Piëch's "favorite toy" since his death in 2019. . . . The complicated corporate ownership structure of Bugatti-Rimac places Rimac Group as the majority stakeholder of the endeavor with 55 percent of the control. Volkswagen-owned Porsche retains the other 45 percent of ownership. Above Rimac Group sits another number of shareholders, beginning with CEO Mate Rimac who controls 37 percent of the company. Porsche controls 24 percent of Rimac Group, Hyundai has 12 percent, and "other investors" amass the remaining 27 percent.
- TacticalCoder 3y ago
  > ... just to get a sense of how much more of a clusterfuck it is than the tidbits I know about. And it all goes back to the Porsche and Piech families, which still own a majority share in VW. But to me the most fascinating of them all is when Porsche tried a short-squeeze on VW stocks to both acquire VW and make countless billions in the process but that failed due to the... 2008 financial crisis. Without the crisis hitting, Porsche (the company, not the family) was acquiring VW. Their short squeeze failed and Porsche lost an insane amount of money on their temporarily worthless VW stocks (the VW stock lost 75% of its value between 2008 and 2009, something insane like that) and then... VW had to rescue Porsche by acquiring Porsche. But then as of late Porsche spun off out of VW again. It's mindboggling stuff. The best description I've read about Porsche (the company) is: "The hedge fund that happened to also sell cars".

The story of how BMW came to own the name, and VW the company is hilarious and includes a law firm having to pay lots of money to VW.

by pintxo 3y ago

The story of how BMW came to own the name, and VW the company is hilarious and includes a law firm having to pay lots of money to VW.

piva00 3y ago

VW's history with corporate structure and brands is a clusterfuck in general, haha, the ownership structure between Volkswagen AG, Porsche SE and Porsche AG is pretty convoluted, then you add other VW-owned brands: Audi which has Lamborghini, Ducati, and Bentley as subsidiaries, Bentley itself has been owner and subsidiary of Rolls-Royce through its history, ending up owning the brand for cars lately. If anyone has ever seen a timeline diagram of their corporate structure I'd be very interested to see, just to get a sense of how much more of a clusterfuck it is than the tidbits I know about.

adolph 3y ago
Don't forget the Rimac-Bugatti structure: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/41414/rimac-just-bought-bugatti-heres-why-its-a-huge-ev-bet-for-vw https://www.thedrive.com/tech/41414/rimac-just-bought-bugatt... Volkswagen group has been said to have slated the sell-off of Ferdinand Piëch's "favorite toy" since his death in 2019. . . . The complicated corporate ownership structure of Bugatti-Rimac places Rimac Group as the majority stakeholder of the endeavor with 55 percent of the control. Volkswagen-owned Porsche retains the other 45 percent of ownership. Above Rimac Group sits another number of shareholders, beginning with CEO Mate Rimac who controls 37 percent of the company. Porsche controls 24 percent of Rimac Group, Hyundai has 12 percent, and "other investors" amass the remaining 27 percent.
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> ... just to get a sense of how much more of a clusterfuck it is than the tidbits I know about. And it all goes back to the Porsche and Piech families, which still own a majority share in VW. But to me the most fascinating of them all is when Porsche tried a short-squeeze on VW stocks to both acquire VW and make countless billions in the process but that failed due to the... 2008 financial crisis. Without the crisis hitting, Porsche (the company, not the family) was acquiring VW. Their short squeeze failed and Porsche lost an insane amount of money on their temporarily worthless VW stocks (the VW stock lost 75% of its value between 2008 and 2009, something insane like that) and then... VW had to rescue Porsche by acquiring Porsche. But then as of late Porsche spun off out of VW again. It's mindboggling stuff. The best description I've read about Porsche (the company) is: "The hedge fund that happened to also sell cars".