VW's brand boss will oversee Skoda and Seat

The head of Volkswagen Group's core VW brand, Ralf Brandstaetter, will oversee the automaker's Skoda and Seat/Cupra volume marques, according to company sources.

The move means VW CEO Herbert Diess has dropped plans to appoint two veteran executives chief operating officers to reduce overlap between brands as he pushes to improve profitability at the automaker.

VW Group's 12 brands include the luxury marques Audi, Porsche and Bentley as well as the mass-market brands VW, Skoda and Seat.

Brandstaetter, whose VW passenger cars brand is by far VW Group's biggest business by unit sales, will supervise all the volume brands. He will be supported by his new chief strategist Andreas Walingen.

This will place Brandstaetter above brand bosses Thomas Schaefer at Skoda, Wayne Griffiths at Seat/Cupra and Carsten Intra, who leads the VW light commercial vehicles business.

Diess had proposed the plan to appoint two chief operating officers to oversee the group's volume and premium brands to stop the brands working on similar projects separately.

VW brand's labor chiefs have long complained that Skoda and Seat get an unfair advantage by using technology developed in Wolfsburg and financed by the core marque.

Two long-serving managers had been picked for the roles. They would have been directly below the management board level, and had started preparing for their tasks, sources told Automobilwoche, a sister publication of Automotive News Europe.

However, Diess's plan was too ambitious and did not survive the complicated power structure at VW's headquarters in Wolfsburg, the sources said.

There were doubts as to whether the two COOs would be able to assert themselves against the self-confident brand chiefs -- especially Audi CEO Markus Duesmann and Porsche CEO Oliver Blume, both of whom sit on the group's management board.

Brandstaetter and the heads of Skoda and Seat have no seats on the management board.

Diess's plan for the new top roles is completely off the table, company sources said.

Duesmann will continue to have sole responsibility for Audi, which also controls Bentley and Lamborghini. Blume will continue to be solely in charge of Porsche and Bugatti.

Diess remains responsible for the volume brand group on the group's management board. However, he will be called in only in the event of disputes between the brand heads and will be supported by a committee of board members.