Volkswagen Will Buy Back 10% Of Shares To Up Stock Price

ByBridge News Volkswagen AG, Europe's largest carmaker, said it would buy back 10% of its shares to finance further acquisitions or buy stakes in other companies. In a statement Sept. 15, the company said it wants to increase the company's stock price. Volkswagen said the buy back will take into account market developments. The company said it will not buy shares that trade 5% below or above the openings price on the day the company plans to buy back shares. The announced plan to buy companies or stakes of companies through share-swap deals comes less than two months after remarks by Ferdinand Piech, Volkwagen's CEO, that he has grown skeptical of takeovers after buying Audi/NSU, Seat, and Skoda. In an interview in the July edition of German monthly Manager Magazine, Piech said it was difficult enough to coordinate four brands of cars and that it was definitely more expensive to mend a problematic company than to start from scratch. Piech does not plan to participate in the current automobile sector merger frenzy, the magazine said. "Outsizing makes [a company] weaker, as we already push the borderline of our limits," Piech said, according to the magazine.