Volkswagen AG appointed Julia Kuhn-Piech and Louise Kiesling to fill the supervisory board seats left open after Chairman Ferdinand Piech and his wife Ursula resigned on Saturday after a power struggle.
Kiesling, 57, and Kuhn-Piech, 34, will take their posts with immediate effect after their nominations were approved by a German court, the Wolfsburg-based company said Thursday in a statement. Both of the new board members are nieces of the former chairman, maintaining the sway of the Porsche-Piech family that controls the manufacturer.
Piech, a grandson of VW Beetle creator Ferdinand Porsche and the leading figure at the automaker for more than two decades, abruptly stepped down from the company’s board after loosing a power struggle over the future of Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn. The 78-year-old auto executive shook up Europe’s largest carmaker earlier this month by publicly challenging the CEO’s authority. But union leaders and other power players, including Piech’s cousin Wolfgang Porsche, joined forces to thwart the attempted ouster.
Kiesling studied fashion and vehicle design and is a managing director of a textile manufacturer in Austria. Kuhn- Piech works in real estate and is a member of the supervisory board of the truck and bus unit of VW subsidiary MAN SE.
