After losing control of its company in 2009, the Porsche family will try to once again gain control of the luxury automotive business through an initial public offering (IPO) later this month.
Key details
Following Porsche’s IPO, the Porsche family will have a 25% share in the company, giving it greater control than it has had in more than a decade.
The share sale will value Porsche at around $84 billion, almost as much as Volkswagen, the parent company. The IPO is expected sometime around the end of September or beginning of October.
VW will retain majority control, holding on to 75% of the spun-off entity, and 12.5% of voting and non-voting shares will be offered to the public—with a special dividend to those shareholders.
If the IPO is successful, it will be a sentimental and lucrative comeback for the Porsche family, who conceded defeat in its attempt to take control of the company in 2009. At the time, Wolfgang Porsche stated: “the Porsche legend lives and will never perish.”
The families Porsche and Piech have a stake in the company worth around $10.5 billion.
Why it’s news
Porsche and Volkswagen share common family history. Wolfgang Porsche is the cousin of Ferdinand Piech, the Volkswagen executive who made the company into the success it is today.
Porsche’s resurgence is a surprising comeback story after the company’s plans to take over Volkswagen backfired in 2009.
In 2005, Porsche began implementing a plan to gradually take over its competitor. However in the economic turmoil of 2009, Volkswagen flipped the script and took over the smaller company. The complicated deal resulted in the Porsche family still maintaining some control over their original car company.
Volkswagen and Porsche will remain closely connected, but the new set up will allow the Porsche family to have more say over strategic decisions in the company. In years past, Porsche has often been forced to follow along with strategic moves that were not in its best interest, such as plans to build electric vehicles, according to Yahoo! Finance.
