KEY POINTS:
Ferdinand Piech, the driving force behind Porsche's takeover of its bigger rival Volkswagen, is a man who clearly thinks a lot about destiny.
In 1999 he was named car executive of the century in acknowledgement of his achievements for the German automotive industry.
His credits include the Audi Quattro and Porsche 917. He is also the man who resurrected the VW Beetle in its modern-day incarnation. Now he wants to secure that reputation by making Germany's biggest car maker immune from foreign takeover.
As a controlling shareholder in Porsche, the luxury sports carmaker founded by his grandfather 100 years ago, and chairman of VW, the 69-year-old Piech is in a unique position to achieve that goal.
This week Porsche took its stake in VW above 30 per cent, triggering a mandatory offer for the rest of the company.
The takeover bid is unlikely to succeed - because Piech has deliberately pitched it at a price unattractive to VW shareholders.
But if the offer fails, Porsche will then be free to add to its stake, gaining creeping control of VW without having to make another full-scale bid.
Does it make any sense for a brand like Porsche, with sales of less than 100,000 a year, to take control of the world's fourth-largest carmaker with annual sales of nearly six million when its two German counterparts, BMW and Mercedes, have tried and failed to make a go of the volume car market?
For Piech, the question is perhaps secondary because this is all about the Porsche dynasty flexing its muscle.
There is no danger of the family line dying out - Piech has fathered 13 children by three women.
But Porsche places equal store by maintaining the longevity of what in essence also remains a family business.
Piech started buying into VW in November, 2005, saying he was protecting Porsche's supply relationship with the larger carmaker.
The two companies have jointly developed a series of four-wheel-drive vehicles and the body shell for the Porsche Cayenne comes from a VW factory in Bratislava.
The fear was that this relationship could be undermined if VW fell into the hands of foreign hedge fund managers, whom German politicians were busily demonising as "locusts".
To the outside world, it looked an odd way for Porsche to tie up so much of its capital. But for now at least the gamble has paid off.
For €5 billion ($9.3 billion), Piech has gained effective control of a company worth £€60.5 billion.
Added to that, Germany's so-called "Volkswagen law", which limited any shareholder to 20 per cent of the voting rights, is being swept away, enabling Porsche and the German state of Lower Saxony, which owns 20 per cent of VW, to control 51 per cent of the company.
One German fund manager described yesterday's share buying as another "cunning move" on Piech's part. But his tactical manoeuvring has not always been so astute. Critics hark back to the hash he made of trying to buy Rolls-Royce in 1998, when he was chief executive of VW.
After a bidding battle with BMW, VW appeared to emerge victorious, paying Rolls' then-owner, Vickers, £479 million ($1.3 billion).
It was only later that Piech discovered that the Rolls-Royce brand was still owned by the aero-engine company of the same name, which then sold the rights for £40 million - to BMW.
During his years in charge of VW's management, Piech drove the group remorselessly upmarket. He succeeded in transforming Audi into a competitor to BMW and Mercedes.
But he also heaped some big structural problems on the group in the shape of an over-engineered range and high production costs.
Does Porsche's share-buying coup presage another U-turn in strategy? And can Piech steer the two companies simultaneously, even with a chief executive as gifted as Porsche's Wendelin Wiedeking on his team?
The fear is that both brands may be damaged. But even at 69, Piech shows no signs of slowing down.
- INDEPENDENT
