Investors want $9B over VW’s ‘dieselgate’
VOLKSWAGEN investors have f i led 1,400 lawsuits seeking € 8.2 billion in compensation from the car giant over its emissions cheat ing sca nda l, a German court said yesterday, adding to a long list of legal woes for the embattled company.
Investors say the automaker failed to disclose details of the case in a timely way, leading them to lose money as the group’s share price plunged by 40 percent in two days after the crisis erupted last September.
The $9.1 billion in claims is mostly made up of “bundled” actions containing lawsuits from multiple plaintiffs, many of them private investors, according to the court in Brunswick, close to VW’s Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony headquarters.
The US government and several German state governments are also among the claimants.
Just two of the claims lodged with the Brunswick court, from groups of institutional investors including Blackrock, the world’s largest fund manager, account for a total of € 2 billion.
A spokesman for Volkswagen reiterated the carmaker’s position that it “continues to believe that we comprehensively fulfilled our obligations under capital markets law and that the claims are unjustified”.
There was little reaction on the Frankfurt stock market to the news, with Volkswagen shares gaining around 0.7 percent by just after 1330 GMT.
Volkswagen’s troubles began after it admitted in September 2015 to installing so-called “defeat devices” in 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide, which increase exhaust treatment when the car detects it is undergoing regulatory tests.
The software deactivates the emissions system when the car is on the road, leading to levels of harmful nitrogen oxides in the exhaust many times higher than allowed.
Most of the cars affected bear the Volkswagen logo, but vehicles made by the group’s Audi, Skoda and Seat brands were also among those equipped with the software.
VW’s admission led to a string of legal claims and investigations around the world.
The group has set aside € 18 billion to pay for the legal costs of the crisis, and has so far agreed to pay $15 billion in compensation and fines in the United States alone.
Analysts estimate the final bill could reach up to € 35 billion euros.
Investors had rushed to file compensation claims at the Brunswick court ahead of what they believe to be a oneyear deadline to lodge complaints. On Monday alone 750 new claims were registered.
The court said it has taken on extra staff and hired additional storage space to cope – as the avalanche represents half the number of cases the tribunal normally hears in a year.
“The complete registration of the claims arrived up to now should be finished in four weeks,” it said.
A single plaintiff will be designated “in the fourth quarter of 2016 at the earliest,” it went on, to represent all the investors wishing to join forces in a common case designed to save legal costs.