{"id":550,"date":"2015-10-29T12:02:58","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T12:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidseall.co.uk\/blog\/?p=550"},"modified":"2015-10-29T15:22:06","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T15:22:06","slug":"the-vw-debacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidseall.co.uk\/blog\/?p=550","title":{"rendered":"The Volkswagen debacle and the lack of good governance"},"content":{"rendered":"

With every day that passes we see a further unravelling of the disaster that’s affecting VW Group. It’s been interesting to see how this has affected<\/a> their multitude of brands and how it will impact on new models, R&D and motorsport programmes.<\/a><\/p>\n

A further development of the story was the amazing “transfer”<\/a> of a Non-Executive Director from the Daimler AG Board to its ailing competitor. The reason being that Daimler \u00a0were worried that the saga was permanently damaging the image of \u00a0German manufacturing.<\/p>\n

Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt will take up a Board position on 1st January to oversee “<\/span>integrity and legal affairs”. She will be the first woman on the VW Board of Managers. One can’t help thinking that a lack of Board diversity led to some of their problems in the first place. Certainly an all-male culture probably wouldn’t have helped.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, by leaving the Daimler AG Board she will leave them with an all male Board unless she is replaced appropriately, so let’s hope that they act accordingly.<\/p>\n

The global impact of this debacle is huge and in the UK alone the total number of cars affected is as follows<\/p>\n