The departure of the VW boss heralds a big shake-up
Apr 12th 2018
MOST chief executives relish a jump in their company’s share price. But spare a thought for Volkswagen’s Matthias Müller as he watched the gauge of value leap by 4.5% on April 10th. That was galling because investors were responding to rumours, in effect promptly confirmed by VW’s board, that he was to depart this week after less than three years as head of one of the world’s top three carmakers.
大多数首席执行官都盼望他们公司股价大涨。但想到大众汽车(Volkswagen)的马提亚·穆勒(Matthias Muller)，当他在4月10日看到股价暴增4.5%时，会感到难堪，因为这是投资者对他将在本周离开大众的传言的回应，他作为世界三家最大的汽车制造商之一的头儿还不到三年的时间。这一消息立即得到了大众董事会的证实。
The pensive Mr Müller, 64, rarely had the air of a man enjoying the limelight. His contract ran until 2020, but he had become increasingly frustrated at internal opposition to his efforts to change the way the company was run in the aftermath of “dieselgate”, a crisis sparked by VW’s rigging of car-emissions tests. To an outsider, changes such as more decentralisation and the sale of peripheral businesses hardly seemed controversial. But they were too much for some. He may be happy to go; the board referred to his “general willingness” to accept the pending management shake-up.
现年64岁的郁郁寡欢的穆勒先生不是一个享受聚光灯的人。他的合同是延续到2020年，但公司内部反对他在“柴油门”危机后努力改变运营方式，他变得越来越沮丧，这一危机是由大众汽车尾气排放测试的传动装置引发的。在外人看来，更多的权力下放和出售非核心业务的改革似乎没有什么可争议的。但对某些人来说这些做的太过了。他可能很乐意离开，董事会引用他的“普遍意愿”的说法来迎接即将进行的管理层改组。
The supervisory board’s motivations are mixed. One is that a new face could help VW move on from dieselgate. Mr Müller, a long-serving insider, was installed in September 2015 to handle the furore. In the aftermath he faced a slump in sales of diesel cars, the jailing of staff in America and a bill of some $30bn (made up of fines and the cost of buying back vehicles from aggrieved consumers).
监事会的动机复杂。一是新面孔可以帮助大众从柴油门事件走出来。长期在内部任职的穆勒先生于2015年9月临危受命，来处理这一风波。在此之后，他面临着柴油汽车销量的下滑、美国员工的监禁以及约300亿美元的账单(包括罚款和从受害消费者召回汽车的费用)。
Mr Müller handled a difficult job competently. VW today is back to roughly the same financial shape it was in just before the scandal broke in mid-2015, with a market capitalisation of some €85bn ($105bn). Its share price has outperformed those of its peers. Last year it doubled profits and sold a record 10.7m vehicles.
穆勒先生胜任了这项艰巨的任务。大众今天的财务大致回到了2015年中期，丑闻爆发之前的状态，市值大约€850亿(1050亿美元)。它的股价表现优于同行。去年，该公司利润翻了一番，销售了创历史纪录的1070万辆汽车。