VW 'sweetens' Porsche bid

The weekly magazine wrote on Saturday that Wendelin Wiedeking, the chief executive of heavily-indebted parent Porsche, still considered the amount insufficient in talks over the possible sale of a 49.9% stake in its healthy, wholly-owned manufacturer of 911 Carrera coupes.

Wiedeking prefers a rival concept to reduce debt that entails the aid of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, ruler of the natural gas-rich Gulf state of Qatar. Der Spiegel wrote that the sheikh has stated his willingness, via an investor agreement, to offer € 7 billion for both a stake of just over 25% in the listed holding and Porsche's cash-settled options in VW stock that Wiedeking used to hedge the cost of his failed stealth takeover of VW. An industry source told Reuters on Saturday the € 7 billion was a realistic amount.

Separately, Spiegel's closest rival Focus reported that Volkswagen was working on a legal concept of how to save the Porsche and Piech families that own Porsche some 1 billion euros as part of a sale to VW - money that otherwise would be lost as tax revenue for the finance ministry. The news emerged as the rival Porsche and Piech clans get set for a supervisory board meeting on July 23 that should decide on the future of the company.

German newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Stuttgarter Zeitung both reported that because of a contractual agreement between the two factions not to split their votes at board meetings, the families would meet in advance to decide.