What drives the man to compete again at the age of 70?

Hans Dieter Pötsch, who was CFO of Volkswagen for many years, was proposed as a new supervisory board shortly before the diesel scandal in 2015 and was elected as chief supervisor and investigator shortly afterwards, wants to be appointed chairman of the important supervisory body for another five years.

The VW supervisory board now passed the corresponding resolution.

Since Pötsch enjoys the trust of the two most important groups of shareholders - that is, the owner families Porsche and Piëch and the state of Lower Saxony - the yes at the Annual General Meeting is purely a matter of form.

Carsten Germis

Business correspondent in Hamburg.

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    Pötsch is considered to be a close confidante of the Porsches and Piëchs and in recent years has earned respect from everyone involved, from the influential VW works council to top management.

    In the delicate balance of power in Wolfsburg, he is something like the ultimate guarantee of continuity.

    Nobody knows the VW system as well as he does, hardly anyone from the top team has been around for so long.

    He has an excellent network and keeps a friendly distance from the camps that are struggling for influence at Volkswagen.

    “Who else is supposed to moderate the difficult conflict situations?”, Ask many in the company.

    The Porsche coup was thanks to Pötsch

    Pötsch has been with Volkswagen since 2003. The then VW boss Bernd Pischetsrieder got to know and appreciate him during their time together at BMW. Pötsch quickly gained wide recognition in the company, not just because of his specialist knowledge. So he survived the fall of Pischetsrieder by the then gray eminence, chairman of the supervisory board Ferdinand Piëch. At that time, Pötsch could not have imagined in his wildest dreams that he would one day take over Piëch's office, who resigned in April 2015 after a bitter power struggle with Winterkorn. It was Pötsch who accomplished the difficult feat of integrating Porsche as the tenth brand into the VW Group in 2009. In the deal, VW took advantage of a loophole in the law so that the business was tax-free.After that, at the latest, Pötsch was the third strong man in the group alongside Piëch and Winterkorn - and valued by the owner families.

    Pötsch is someone with whom the old meaning of the word "Lord" comes to mind when you first meet. Always correctly dressed in reserved colors, he stands straight on his back as if with a ruler. He appears polite and a bit stiff. That changes when he speaks. Maybe it's the Austrian timbre of his homeland. Although he has a clear position of his own, he always creates the connection in conversation. The “man without qualities”, as he was always described because of his reserved manner, is a moderator who controls the conversation as if on transparent threads. In the tough power struggle between CEO Herbert Diess, who tends to be a bit rough internally, and works councilor Bernd Osterloh, it has always been his role to mediate in recent years.Where Diess and Osterloh are tried and tested doers of power, Pötsch is the influential moderator and manager of power.