Ferdinand Piech yesterday survived a series of withering attacks on his stewardship to remain as chairman of Volkswagen for a further five years.
Mr Piech, who turned 70 on Tuesday, came under fire for ousting Bernd Pischetsrieder as chief executive last year and faced accusations of conflicts of interest because of his family's ownership of Porsche, VW's biggest shareholder.
He sat impassively at the group's annual meeting as small shareholder representatives assailed VW's poor record on corporate governance. Hans-Christoph Hirt from Hermes, Britain's biggest pension fund, said baldly: "If Mr Piech remains on the supervisory board that's not in the interests of VW."
Mr Hirt, head of European corporate governance at Hermes, which voted against Mr Piech's re-election, condemned him for engineering the dismissal of Mr Pischetsrieder only five months after the chief executive had won a five-year extension to his contract. He also accused him of presiding over a board denuded of genuine independent directors capable of looking after shareholder interests.
Mr Piech said of the chief executive's removal: "I discovered too late I had chosen the wrong person and I corrected that decision with the greatest difficulty last November." He added that Mr Pischetsrieder was still working for VW.
Mr Piech, grandson of Ferdy Porsche, VW's founder, has ensured that the group is safe from a foreign or hostile takeover through moves by the family-owned sports car-maker to take its stake over 30%, triggering a mandatory takeover offer that Porsche tabled yesterday. It is offering €101 (£68.60) a share - far below the €116 the stock attained yesterday - and insists it has no plans to take VW over.
The VW chairman has also seen off moves by Christian Wulff, state premier of Lower Saxony, the car-maker's second biggest shareholder with 20.6%, to unseat him.
VW, which last year delivered a 50% jump in operating profits to €4.4bn, said earnings in the first quarter of 2007 had jumped 58% to €1.1bn on sales up 8% and turnover up 5% to €26.6bn. Martin Winterkorn, the new chief executive, told the meeting that profits this year would "probably" be higher than last year's and pre-tax earnings would be "at least" €5.1bn next year.
