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By Conor Gaffey
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Volkswagen will name the head of sports car maker Porsche as its group chief executive on Friday to succeed Martin Winterkorn who quit over the diesel emissions scandal, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Matthias Mueller, VW's former head product strategist who joined the group's top management board in March, is favored by a majority on VW's 20-member supervisory board, which will endorse him as new CEO at a meeting on Friday, the source said.
Winterkorn, an engineer by training who spent almost nine years at the helm of Europe's largest automaker, resigned on Wednesday, taking responsibility for the biggest business scandal in VW's 78-year history.
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Mueller, 62, who held various positions at VW's luxury flagship Audi before taking charge of Porsche in 2010, was also the favorite candidate for VW's top job by long-time chairman Ferdinand Piech, who quit in April after a power struggle with Winterkorn.
Labor representatives, occupying half of the 20 board seats, would "only accept a personality with great technical and entrepreneurial expertise as well as great social competence," VW works council chief Bernd Osterloh said in a letter to employees published on Thursday.
VW declined to comment.
Mueller's appointment will be part of a raft of personnel decisions and dismissals by the board including the firing of R&D chiefs at Audi and Porsche, Ulrich Hackenberg and Wolfgang Hatz, as well as VW's top U.S. executiveMichael Horn, a source told Reuters earlier on Thursday.
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