Volkswagen shareholders are being urged to increase pressure on the company to reveal the results of an external investigation into the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal.
Hermes EOS, an asset management firm, has called for shareholders to take new measures in order to hold Volkswagen to account over what it says is a failure to properly address the issues which led to the scandal.
It wants Volkswagen bosses to release the key findings of an external investigation undertaken by law firm Jones Day into how the emissions scandal happened, and how widespread knowledge of it was within the VW ranks.
Hermes also urged shareholders to pursue a “systemic, independent review” of Volkswagen’s corporate culture, and also to independently evaluate the company’s board over its effectiveness.
Hans-Christoph Hirt, head of Hermes EOS, called for shareholders to back a no confidence vote in Volkswagen’s board, saying that it had “failed” to address the underlying problems.
The ‘Dieselgate’ scandal erupted in late 2015, when it was found that Volkswagen had use so-called ‘defeat device’ software on some of its diesel cars to effectively cheat on emissions tests.
Volkswagen was forced to admit that as many as 11 million diesel cars had been fitted with such software, which faked data to make the vehicles appear more eco-friendly than they were.
The scandal has had far-reaching consequences which continue to be felt today, both for the Volkswagen Group and for the public perception of diesel fuel across Europe.
Volkswagen has since agreed to pay tens of billions of dollars in compensation and fines to both consumers and authorities, while it also faces a torrent of separate legal claims in countries around the world.
However, Hermes claims that it hasn’t gone far enough and that problems, particularly among top-level employees, remain. Volkswagen has declined to comment on the asset management firm’s claims, and has also come under fire from British MPs over the findings of the Jones Day report.
MPs on the Transport Select Committee say they’ve battled to get the findings released, and have claimed that Volkswagen has reneged on earlier promises to publish the findings in full.
In spite of the ‘Dieselgate’ woes, Volkswagen has reported strong performance for the first quarter of this year, and also recently overtook Toyota to become the world’s largest vehicle manufacturer.
