After the steering committee's decision to back current CEO Martin Winterkorn over Ferdinand Piëch, VW chairman and patriarch of the Porsche family, Piëch has announced his resignation.

Piëch along with the Porsche family controls 51% of the VW Group, which is the second largest car maker in the world.

Earlier this month, Piëch was quoted as saying that he had ‘distanced’ himself from CEO Winterkorn, and has brought into public a row over the levels of profits within the VW Group, and its failure to make inroads in to the American market.

In a big step for the company, the VW steering committee has decided to back Martin Winterkorn as the ‘best possible CEO for Volkswagen’ over Piëch’s move to have him replaced.

The reason mentioned behind it was Piëch’s declining confidence in the VW CEO due to low profit margins and failure to make relevant models for the US market along with diminishing profits from the region.

It was expected that Ferdinand Piëch would be staying on till the expiry of his tenure, which is in 2017. But, in an official statement released by the company, the members said, “They came to a consensus that, in the light of the past weeks, the mutual trust necessary for successful cooperation was no longer there”.

They said that against this background, Professor Doctor Ferdinand K. Piëch has resigned from his office as chairman as well as all his supervisory board mandates within the Volkswagen group with immediate effect.

Piëch’s wife, Ursula backed his decision. She resigned from her post in the supervisory board.
In lieu of the vacancy, deputy chairman Berthold Huber will be assuming the temporary leadership of the board until the election of a new chairman.