VW could fork over 40 Billion Euros to Its Shareholders

There seems to be no happy end to Volkswagen’s Dieselgate scandal, especially since more and more bits and pieces are being added into the mix continuously.

This week’s main course is more on the speculative side, so take it with a couple of pinches of salt. According to The Telegraph, a number of legal firms are trying to gather shareholders and launch a legal attack against Volkswagen, with the lawsuit expected to make the carmaker pay up to 40 billion euros ($45 billion) as compensation to the investors involved and whose trust has been shattered.

The not-yet-assembled class action suit is said to be based on “fundamental dishonesty” expressed by Volkswagen after the company announced that it had used so-called “defeat software devices” to circumvent pollution tests in the United States and other countries. Around 11 million TDI vehicles sold worldwide are involved the scandal at first count.

Although Volkswagen finally played ball and didn’t try to cover their trickery even longer, the public announcement did nothing to alleviate the drop in VW’s stock market value, with shareholders losing no less than a cumulated 25 billion euros ($28 billion) up until now.

Apparently, the upcoming lawsuit is spearheaded by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a huge law firm, which The Telegraph mentions that it has won about 44 billion euros ($50 billion) for its clients in lawsuits representing high-dollar clients like Sony, Google or Fifa.

 

 

Together with claim funding group Bentham, Quinn Emanuel will try to pursue the suit in Germany, planning to argue that VW’s agenda of hiding the use of defeat devices from its shareholders had constituted gross management negligence.

Considering that Volkswagen bosses have continuously denied knowing anything about what a “group of rogue engineers” had fitted to the affected diesel cars, this will probably not be the a walk in the park for the law firm. Quinn Emanuel and Bentham are already trying to get VW’s biggest shareholders to join the class action lawsuit. Among the largest Volkswagen investors, we find the Qatar Investment Authority, Capital Group Companies and even the German State of Lower Saxony.