The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
– Berlin orders recall of 22,000 Porsches over emissions cheating (Update):
Germany on Thursday ordered luxury car brand Porsche to recall 22,000 vehicles across Europe over emissions test cheating amid a widening election-year scandal.
“We will order a legally binding recall for these vehicles, just as we have in other cases,” he said.
Read moreGermany orders recall of 22,000 Porsches over emissions cheating (Update)
– Vatican Blesses Porsche, Blocks Plebs From Sistine Chapel (ZeroHedge, Oct 20, 2014):
For the first time in the 600(or so)-year history of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, Pope Francis has decided to rent out the Sistine Chapel for an $8000-per-head concert organized by Porsche. What makes this unprecedented action even more ‘interesting’ is the fact that The Vatican – in all its omnipotent wisdom – also made an announcement that it will be limiting the number of vistors (read ‘common folk’) allowed inside the chapel and as IBTimes reports, demanding vistors must be silent and cannot take photographs. So much for Pope Francis’ “poor Church of the poor.”
Read moreVatican Blesses Porsche, Blocks Plebs From Sistine Chapel
– What The “Porsche Indicator” Tells Us About The Greek “Recovery” (ZeroHedge, Sep 17, 2014):
As the “Big Mac Index” is to global purchase price parity levels of inflation, so when it comes to the state of the “recovery” if not for everyone, then certainly for the 0.1%, there is no better metric than the “Porsche Indicator.” Recall: “Porsche Reports Record Sales in 2013; 21 Percent Increase Over 2012” which certainly didn’t come on the back of yet another year of declines in real incomes for the middle class (spoiler alert: it came on the back of some $10 trillion in liquidty injections by the world’s central banks).
Read moreWhat The ‘Porsche Indicator’ Tells Us About The Greek ‘Recovery’
– Porsche Sales Surge To Record – 3 Years Ahead Of Plan (ZeroHedge, Feb 12, 2014):
It seems yet another (luxury) car maker did not get the “but it’s the weather” memo. Following Mercedes record sales in January, Porsche has announced today that expects to hit a target of selling more than 200,000 sports cars next year, three years earlier than originally scheduled. As Reuters reports, Volkswagen-owned Porsche is entering the lucrative segment of compact SUVs with its new Macan model, which has already sold out about eight months of production ahead of its arrival at German dealerships on April 4. Wealth effect, of course, is all that matters… and the promise of higher minimum wages and a Maserati in every garage.
Porsche expects to hit a target of selling more than 200,000 sports cars next year, three years earlier than originally scheduled, as the brand keeps pushing into sport-utility vehicles, Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said.
Read morePorsche Sales Surge To Record – 3 Years Ahead Of Plan
– Porsche’s 1898 e-car returns after a century in storage (CNET, Jan 28, 2014):
The very first Porsche, an electric carriage, sat untouched in a warehouse for 111 years, but now it’s come home.
On June 26, 1898, Ferdinand Porsche’s “Egger-Lohner C.2 electric vehicle,” better known as the “P-1,” rolled on to the streets of Vienna for the first time. In 1899, the P-1 took the gold medal (by a full 18 minutes!) against a field of other electric vehicles in Berlin. Then in 1902, as Porsche put the first all-wheel drive passenger car into production, the P-1 was parked in a warehouse…where it sat untouched for the next 111 years.
After missing two world wars, the entire Berlin Wall era, and six “Fast and Furious” flicks during the intervening 11 decades, Porsche says in a release (PDF) the P-1 has now been recovered and is on permanent display, unrestored, at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.
– Here’s a Corporate Tax Loophole a Porsche Could Drive Through (Daily Finance, July 9, 2012):
For years, much of the tax-paying American public has been appalled by the loopholes that U.S. corporations and rich individuals use to reduce their tax liability to the IRS.
Read moreHere’s a Corporate Tax Loophole a Porsche Could Drive Through
Porsche automobiles sit lined up in the Porsche Forum in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, Germany on Nov. 25, 2008. Photographer: Hannelore Foerster/Bloomberg News
May 26 (Bloomberg) — Porsche SE, struggling to combine with Volkswagen AG, is in danger of losing some of the 17.3 billion euros ($24.3 billion) in profits recorded from holding VW options because it may not have the money to exercise them.
Porsche bought options and Volkswagen stock for more than three years and controls more than 70 percent of Europe’s biggest automaker. Now, Stuttgart, Germany-based Porsche may be unable to raise the money needed to cash in the options, according to research by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. and FAIResearch GmbH & Co.
The 78-year-old maker of the 911 sports car piled up more than 9 billion euros in debt and hasn’t been able to raise the financing even after the options contracts surged in value along with the sevenfold gain in VW shares since 2005, according to the analysts. Porsche is attempting to negotiate a merger with Volkswagen and seek an investor to provide cash after its bid last year fell apart when VW’s home state of Lower Saxony vetoed the proposal and its car deliveries fell 27 percent in the six months ended Jan. 31.
Read morePorsche $24 Billion of Options Profit in Peril as Volkswagen Fights Merger
Porsche’s shares fell 3.1pc in Frankfurt on Monday after it emerged that the company had obtained a €700bn loan from Volkswagen as long ago as March. A Porsche spokesman said the group is negotiating bridging finance with a variety of banks, including the state lender KfW.
It is understood that Porsche is also in talks with the Bank of Tokyo for a €750m loan, and is seeking help from the regional government of Baden-Wurttemberg.
The crisis is yet another headache for the German authorities as they put together a rescue deal this week for Opel, most likely with Fiat. Separately, the hotel and retail group Arcandor said it faced collapse without a €650m state bail-out. Arcandor’s share price fell 20pc. The company owns the Karstadt department stores, Quelle, and Thomas Cook. It employs 50,000 workers.
Porsche acquired a 51pc share of VW earlier this year after a series of derivatives deals that tripled Porsche’s debt to €9bn.
The takeover bid went badly wrong, forcing Porsche chief Ferdinand Piech to press instead for a merger of the two car makers on increasingly less favourable terms.
