EY must not be­come aud­itor of Volk­swa­gen AG again! 

Share­hold­ers sub­mit counter-​motion to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing on 16 May 2025 and ask for support

Volk­swa­gen AG is plan­ning to re­appoint Ernst & Young (EY) as aud­it­ors at the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing on 16 May 2025. This has pro­voked vig­or­ous op­pos­i­tion from shareholders.

What these share­hold­ers are cri­ti­cising: The re­appoint­ment of EY for the im­port­ant of­fice of aud­itor can­not be re­con­ciled with EY’s neg­at­ive role in the Wir­e­card scan­dal. This is all the more true as EY has so far not only re­fused to cla­rify its role in the Wir­e­card scan­dal, but is also not pre­pared to ne­go­ti­ate com­pens­a­tion for Wir­e­card in­vestors. What’s more, in January/​February 2024, the Ger­man EY sub­si­di­ary un­der­went a spec­tac­u­lar change of legal form. This change in legal form has sig­ni­fic­antly lim­ited cred­it­ors’ ac­cess to the as­sets of the formerly uni­form Ger­man EY na­tional com­pany. In other words: EY has made it­self small in or­der to be able to flee into in­solv­ency in the event of danger.

Law­yer Dr Wolfgang Schirp, Ber­lin, whose law firm is rep­res­ent­ing the largest group of plaintiffs against EY: “We have no sym­pathy for the fact that EY is to be re­appoin­ted as aud­itor by Volk­swa­gen. EY is one of those re­spons­ible for the Wir­e­card scan­dal, the biggest fin­an­cial scan­dal in Ger­man his­tory. EY ex­pressly re­fuses to com­ply with a re­quest from the highest court of Bav­aria and to en­deav­our to reach a set­tle­ment with the in­jured parties.”

Dr Schirp con­tin­ued: “Volk­swa­gen AG is also harm­ing it­self by en­ga­ging EY. The change of legal form in January/​February 2024 means that EY’s total li­ab­il­ity is lim­ited to the li­able cap­ital entered in the com­mer­cial re­gister. This is an amount of ap­prox­im­ately EUR 2 mil­lion. Such a low li­ab­il­ity amount is no longer ap­pro­pri­ate for the size of the task at Volk­swa­gen AG, nor for the amount of the ex­pec­ted fee. EY GmbH & Co. KG Wirtschaft­s­prü­fungs­gesell­schaft would no longer be in a po­s­i­tion to ad­equately cover pos­sible claims. Why does Volk­swa­gen en­gage a con­trac­tual part­ner such as EY, which makes it­self look small and thus makes it clear that it does not in­tend to com­ply with court judge­ments, but in­stead wants to flee into in­solv­ency if necessary?”

Share­hold­ers rep­res­en­ted by Dr. Schirp have there­fore sub­mit­ted a counter-​motion to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing of Volk­swa­gen AG on May 16th and ask all other share­hold­ers ex­pli­citly for their sup­port. Please read all counter-​motions here (ours is the second one, dir­ectly after Prof. Spren­ger): Antraege_​02_​05_​25_​DE_​geschwaerzt Ge­gen­an­träge zur HV der Volk­swa­gen AG am 16.05.2025