“The carmaker cartel’s overlooked victims”

Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW and automotive industry supplier Continental contribute over 40 percent to the total revenue and one third to the profits of Germany’s stock index DAX, which comprises the country’s 30 largest market-listed companies, Daniel Eckert writes on Welt Online. “Anyone holding a Germany-equity fund” or an index-based pension fund “can almost be sure to be indirectly linked with one or more” of the car industry heavyweights, he says. The allegations over a possible cartel formed by VW, Daimler, BMW, Audi and Porsche “might cost the carmakers up to 19 billion euros, experts say”, Eckert writes. The carmakers themselves were “too big to fail” for Germany, asset manager Frank Wieser says. But this did not hold true for thousands of investors and smaller suppliers, he adds.

Read the article in German here.

See this CLEW article for Reactions to the allegations over a German carmaker cartel.