CEO Intrigues in Deutschland

Ferdinand Piëch seems to be reaching for those heights. He is the controlling shareholder of Porsche and the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, who designed the VW Beetle. Under his leadership, Porsche strayed from its core metallic mission and became the largest shareholder of Volkswagen, which has a completely different brand identity. VW's ownership and governance structure also is a real dog's breakfast—Lower Saxony, a state government, owns a big stake, and the IG Metall union controls half the seats on the company's supervisory board. It is, quite simply, an unmanageable company.

So now Piëch has forced out Bernd Pischetsrieder, the VW CEO, for no apparent reason other than Piëch's desire to build the legend in his own mind. "Why can't he leave the company alone?" asked one senior executive at VW.

The only positive note is that Martin Winterkorn, CEO of the Audi unit, steps up to lead all of VW. Audi is one of the world's fastest growing luxury carmakers, but VW hasn't understood how to manage the Audi brand. It introduced the ill-fated $72,000 VW Phaeton, for example, which should have been an Audi. Maybe now Audi can shine. For better or worse, German CEOs are in the spotlight:

Kai-Uwe Ricke, 45, chief executive of Deutsche Telekom, Europe's largest telecom company, resigned in the face of poor sales. His successor was said to be René Obermann, 43, head of the wireless division.

Siemens CEO Klaus Kleinfeld is looking good. The company's net income for the year ending Sept. 30 rose 38 percent to 3.1 billion euros, and sales jumped 16 percent, to 87.3 billion euros. The stock rose 3.1 percent in a single day. Kleinfeld is putting Siemens through an ambitous remake.