Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG of Stuttgart, Germany, will conclude its mandatory offer to shareholders of Volkswagen AG, Wolfsburg, this Friday, now that all conditions for imple-mentation have been met, including the preconditions under merger control. In March 2007, Porsche exceeded a control threshold of 30 percent at Volkswagen, which made a – legally prescribed – mandatory bid necessary. In this context, the Stuttgart automobile manufacturer received an offer to purchase 172,218 ordinary and 68,262 preference shares, i.e. consid-erably less than one percent of VW’s shares. Notwithstanding this volume, Porsche had to comply with the regulatory authorities’ requirements in order to complete the offer, i.e. to acquire these shares. The manufacturer of premium sports cars referred to this in the bid documents.
Now that Porsche has met all of the necessary conditions for implementation and all of the corresponding permits have been obtained, nothing further can stand in the way of its pur-chase of the shares offered in the course of the mandatory bid, and thus also the payment of the equivalent value to the VW shareholders.
