Copied off BBC web site & not edited but the details are there

Fast Bucks: How Porsche Made Billions(Business and Finance)

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Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

7:30pm to 8:00pm(Other show times...)

Over two days in October 2008, it was revealed that the luxury sports car manufacturer Porsche was behind an audacious takeover bid for Volkswagen. It has been alleged that Porsche manipulated the market, made a fortune and ended up potentially taking over its rival. With the German authorities investigating, The Money Programme's Max Flint travels to Germany to discover one of the most amazing stories of the economic downturn.

Stereo, Widescreen, Subtitles

Keywords: Business, Finance, Business & Finance

Sounds intersting :rubchin:

A very interesting program, have recorded it so i can watch it again, so i can understand abit more of what they were talking about :confused:

Cheers for the heads up on that Stuart; would have missed that completely otherwise.

Certainly some food for thought there, no doubt.

Steve

Well gonna have to watch it on iplayer...

Seems Porsche got one over the markets & theres some sour grapes around.

It would appear the program based a lot of its research on what the markets told them !

At no point did it mention the following.

Porsche source a massive number of their components from VAG & did not want its major supplier being bought by a competitor or foreign business.

The new Euro emission codes proposed are taken as an average over the whole range of cars made, Porsche would struggle with their biase to high performance cars buit now they can include Polos & the like it helps them to comply & puts them on an equal playing field with their competitors Ferrari are Fiat, Jaguar are Tata etc. BMW have mini & the 1 series

Personally I feel it was a great strategy by Porsche to ensure the long term survival of the company & its ah such a shame that a few hedge funds lost out, just remember a few months ago when they all tried to Engineer the price of oil up & stood to make a killing & we all suffered as a result.

Nice one Porsches, Im certainly happier that they own VAG rather than Mr Tata or one of the American Giants bleeding it dry to prop up their archaic businesses.

Seems Porsche got one over the markets & theres some sour grapes around.

That just about sums it up. Porsche weren't exactly playing fair to start with but if financiers want to play with fire then they can expect to get their fingers burnt.

I liked the heartfelt plea about hedge fund managers and "your pension money" at the end Shame the sorts of numbers talked about are completely dwarfed by the telephone number sized ****-up that's gone on in banking, MBSs and CDSs where they can't blame anyone else.

Very interesting prog indeed.....and ingenious if they planned to control the market as they "allegedly" did!

Seems Porsche got one over the markets & theres some sour grapes around

I'm not a finance expert, but that seems to sum it up for me to; the hedge fund managers gambled by short selling shares and when the gamble didn't pay off they whinge and moan call foul...just shows them up as the c*** they are

I only caught the last ten minutes, but I got the impression that a bunch of overpaid gambling parasites backed the wrong horse and lost. These hedge fund managers aren't quite as clever as they thought they were if Porsche beat them at their own game, if they were any good they should have known that Porsche were buying VW shares.:P

shame the programme was spoiled by repetitive shots of the guy doing "Mildly exciting" driving in a Boxster and a Beetle.

AFAIUI, Porsche weren't buying the VW shares, they were exercising options, which can be done without anyone else in the market knowing.

they did this at a preciously agreed low price when the real price was higher.

then when the price was really high, they made money by selling off some of the shares to pay back the desparate hedgers.

the "scandal" was whether or not they new how much of a problem they were causing, and were deliberately "playing" the market to make more money.

Edited 24 January, 200917 yr by Wet Kipper

Considering the same stuff has been happening legally by those who stand to profit (the hedge fund managers) it should not matter..

I'm not saying that what happened was a bad thing.

I'm not saying that what happened was a bad thing.

Didn't mean to imply you had sorry

For the whole of the VAG (I guess now Porsche LOL) brands it is probably one of the best things that could have happened.

Relatively speaking the combined group has a pretty good balance sheet, especially compared to GM/Ford - not perfect either but still.

Ignoring the money bit, ensuring the group as a whole survives is great also for those who work as suppliers to, or employees of, VAG etc.

It will be interesting to see how it all works out in the end, the EU laws can be interesting sometimes, just look at Microsoft's treatment recently.

If nothing else though, I liked the article as it shows the tricks that can be done with money if you are in the 'right' position to benefit from it.

I'm not a finance expert, but that seems to sum it up for me to; the hedge fund managers gambled by short selling shares and when the gamble didn't pay off they whinge and moan call foul...just shows them up as the c*** they are

Yep, I agree. Short selling is a gamble, and one which didn't pay off in this instance. I think the fund managers were annoyed that Porsche built up their quantity of shares (and options) in secret, as Germany is the only country in the EU[?] where you don't have to declare when you own more than 30% of a company.

I was surprised at quite how large (powerful?) Porsche has managed to make itself