Volkswagen to buy out remaining Audi shareholders

Volkswagen has confirmed it will pay €237 million ($388 million) to purchase the last tranche of Audi shares it doesn’t already own.

The German auto giant currently owns 99.64 per cent of the luxury marque, and confirmed in February it was planning on purchasing the remaining stock.

Volkswagen says it will pay €1551.53 ($2537) per each Audi share, a premium of around 47 per cent over the company share price of €1050 ($1717) prior to the announcement.

The purchase price is expected to rubber stamped at Audi’s next annual general meeting, which will take place in either July or August.

When the purchase goes through, it will mean the retirement of the company’s stock symbol, NSU, which is one of the last holdovers of the 1969 merger between Auto Union and NSU.

At that point Auto Union had been majority owned by Volkswagen for around four years. Prior to this Auto Union was a subsidiary of Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz.

Daimler was convinced into purchasing an 88 per cent stake in Auto Union in 1958 by Friedrich Flick, then the largest shareholder in both automakers.

Flick, it should be noted, was one of the richest people in Germany both before and after World War II.

He was convicted at the Nuremberg trials for using slave labour at mining and manufacturing conglomerate, and donating heavily to senior members of the Nazi party.

Flick served three years out of his seven-year sentence, and had 75 per cent of fortune seized.