The German car maker has still
not decided whether vehicle owners will be offered cash, car buy-backs,
repairs or replacement cars, Kenneth Feinberg told the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Feinberg
previously headed the compensation funds for the Sept. 11, 2001
attacks, BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill and General Motors' ignition
switch crashes.
On
Friday, Volkswagen postponed the publication of its 2015 results and
delayed its annual shareholders' meeting as it struggles to put an exact
price on its emissions scandal.
More
than four months after the scandal broke in the United States, Europe's
leading car maker has still not won approval for a fix for any of the
vehicles. Last week it named a new head of its U.S. legal department to
help resolve the case.
Feinberg
told the paper he was unlikely to meet his goal of setting up the
claims fund within 60 to 90 days, saying: "My hands are tied as long as
VW and the authorities have not overcome their differences."
He
said he expected an overwhelming majority to accept the eventual offer,
and that VW had given him full authority to set the level.
"Look
at my prior cases: 97 percent of the victims of Sept. 11 accepted my
offer. At GM and BP it was more than 90 percent, too. That has to be my
target for VW," Feinberg said.
"It
is a purely business transaction, less emotional. I see that from
emails I get from vehicle owners, who say things like: 'Mr. Feinberg, I
know I haven't lost a relative, I just want to be treated fairly.' They
are all quite reasonable."
SHARES FALL SHARPLY
Feinberg said he had not yet decided whether to consider claims that the emissions damaged the health of claimants.
"I am inclined to not accept that and tell such people they should sue Volkswagen if they want to," he said.
Uncertainty
about the financial impact of the scandal on VW's accounts has
increased since the start of the year, sending its shares 26 percent
lower.
However,
Norway's $850 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, told
the paper it would remain invested in Volkswagen, in which it holds 1.2
percent.
"VW is
an important company for Germany, Europe and the world. That's why we
will keep our stake as long as the fund and the company exist," the
fund's CEO Yngve Slyngstad said.
But
he added that since 2008 the fund has criticized the ownership
structure at Volkswagen, where the Porsche and Piech families hold 31.5
percent of the capital but control 50.7 percent of voting rights.
U.S.
regulators last month rejected VW's original plan to fix 2.0 liter
diesel cars equipped with software designed to conceal the cars' true
emissions, raising concerns that VW may have to carry out a larger
number of costly buy-backs.
VW
has already promised goodwill packages worth $1,000 to tens of
thousands of VW owners in the United States, and the European Commission
and European lawmakers have urged it to consider making a similar offer
to owners in Europe.
The
group set aside 6.7 billion euros ($7.5 billion) in the third quarter
of 2015 to cover repair costs for vehicles worldwide. Pieper said this
might need to be topped up by another 2-3 billion euros.
By: Reuters (Frankfurt).
Reporting: Arno Schuetze.
Editing: Kevin Liffey.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.
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