WHAT on earth is going on at Volkswagen? Profits will be up 50% this year and the share price is riding high—yet the boss has suddenly quit. The problem is that VW is not as healthy as it looks and is beset with political problems, both internal and external.
Start with the external politics. VW has the state of Lower Saxony as a big shareholder and a special law to protect it from takeovers. The German government is under persistent pressure to scrap this law from both the European Commission (which says it is anti-competitive) and foreign investors (who think it caps the share price). Meanwhile, the internal politics on VW's supervisory board has turned into a civil war. Bernd Pischetsrieder, who will leave the chief executive's job at the end of the year, only six months into a new contract, is the latest victim.
先从外部政治问题说起。大众的大股东是下萨克森州（state of Lower Saxony），同时有一条专门的法律保护大众免受并购。在欧洲委员会的眼中，这条法律防碍竞争，外国投资者认为其限制了股价，使得德国政府处于废除这条法律的持续不断的压力之下。同时，监事会（Supervisory Board）的内部政治问题已经演变成一场内战。伯恩德•彼斯切瑞德，就是最近的牺牲品。他将于在年底离开首席执行官的职位，离他续约仅仅只有6个月。
His predecessor, Ferdinand Piëch, is now chairman of the supervisory board and the relationship between the two soured long ago. Mr Piëch has made no secret of his desire to replace Mr Pischetsrieder with Martin Winterkorn, the head of Audi, the VW group's successful premium-brand subsidiary. Audi has done so well that it is now propping up the rest of the group: its margins are double those at VW. In America VWs are even sold at a loss, because of the strength of the euro and the relative inefficiency of VW's German factories.
Things got worse when Porsche, a sports-car firm in which Mr Piëch is a big shareholder, took a 20% stake in VW at his behest last year. The move paid off for Porsche and its shareholders because the VW share price soared. The appointment of two Porsche bosses to VW's supervisory board also increased Mr Piëch's power. Hence VW's bizarre decision to axe low-cost production in Belgium, Spain and Portugal, and to repatriate work to more costly German plants in order to make better use of their capacity. Mr Piëch is replaying his strategy from the mid-1990s when, unable to sack German workers for political reasons, he ramped up production to accelerate out of trouble.
Mr Piëch's trick is unlikely to work this time—VW already has a huge share of the European market, and now faces much tougher competition. For his part, Mr Pischetsrieder has evidently had enough of Mr Piëch's backseat driving.
彼切先生的决窍这次不太可能奏效。大众已经占据了欧洲市场很大的市场份额，目前面临更加激烈的竞争。对彼斯切瑞德先生来说，他明显已经受够了彼切先生的幕后操控。翻译 by windspeaker