Porsche made three times what it made selling cars on options trades...Insane.
Just when you thought they couldn't make anymore money selling over priced shift knobs...Says they're "rumored" to be targeting a (51%) take over of VW in the near term.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cd3a6a70-914e-11dc-9590-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
"Porsche has a lot to thank Holger Härter for. The slightly scruffy 51-year-old, nearly always seen with stubble, hardly seems the type to be chief financial officer of one of the world's most prominent and successful family-run companies.
But Mr Härter has run the German sports carmaker in ways that are very un-family-like. In the same way that secretive traders in Connecticut or London have built up powerful hedge funds, so this trained economist from rural Germany has carved out a niche for himself as a financial wizard sitting in Stuttgart.
So far, he has been spectacularly successful, whether it was first investing in euro-dollar hedges when the exchange rate was at $0.90, only to cash in as the greenback weakened, or now by capitalising on Porsche's control of Volkswagen.
Nobody is quite sure how Porsche made €3.6bn from share options last year - against just €1bn from its so-called "core" carmaking business - but it looks essentially like it bet on VW's shares rising. As these have risen from €40 to €180 in the two years in which Porsche has held them, it has not been a bad bet. It has also helped finance the increase in Porsche's stake in VW to 31 per cent."FT-Betts