VW mulling Porsche counter bid: Reports

FRANKFURT: Volkswagen is mulling a takeover of the automotive business of luxury sports car maker Porsche, which would add a new twist in the German industrial saga, press reports said on Thursday.

Directors of VW, the biggest European car maker, are considering making a bid for Porsche AG which would relieve the highly-indebted parent company Porsche SE, the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) and Financial Times said.

Porsche made an audacious takeover bid for VW, which has sales 15 times larger than its smaller German peer, three and a half years ago.

"The tail would finally stop wagging the dog," said a person familiar with VW thinking, the FT reported.

Porsche SE currently has nine billion euros (11.7 billion dollars) in debt.

Porsche boss Wendelin Wiedeking is looking for ways to finance the original plan to buy VW and a capital increase is not ruled out, the FTD said.

The Porsche parent group owns a little more than 50 per cent of Wolfsburg-based VW and wants to raise its stake to 75 per cent.

A VW spokesman declined to comment on the report and Porsche was not immediately available.

Porsche's difficulty in financing the purchase of the much bigger VW has raised market speculation in recent weeks.

The magazine Manager said Stuttgart-based Porsche was in talks with possible investors in the Middle East, while VW shareholders were to meet on Thursday in a general assembly.