Porsche CEO Matthias Mueller poses in a Targa 911 4 GTS before the 2014 results news conference in Stuttgart on March 13, 2015. Mueller will likely beat out Herbert Diess, a former BMW executive who took over as the Volkswagen brand chief this year, to become the new VW CEO, sources say.

Bloomberg/Berlin

Matthias Mueller, the head of the Porsche sports-car brand, has emerged as the front-runner to succeed Martin Winterkorn as Volkswagen’s chief executive officer and repair the company’s tarnished image, people familiar with the matter said.
Mueller, a company veteran for four decades, enjoys the support of the family that controls Volkswagen as well as the automaker’s influential labour leaders, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.
The final decision is due to be made today, when the 20-person supervisory board meets at the company’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany.
The 62-year-old Porsche chief would take charge as Volkswagen seeks to regain the trust of consumers and regulators after admitting to rigging engines to circumvent pollution controls.
The crisis wiped nearly €20bn ($22.4bn) off its market capitalisation this week, forcing Winterkorn to step down on Wednesday as the scandal widened and opened the door for sweeping changes at the company.
Mueller was already touted as a potential CEO successor when former chairman Ferdinand Piech failed in a bid to oust Winterkorn in April. He’s run the maker of the 911 sports car since October 2010. Over the past four years, the unit’s earnings have surged by almost two-thirds. Like his predecessor, Mueller is a long-serving Volkswagen employee, joining the Audi division as a tool-making apprentice in the early 1970s.
Mueller will likely beat out Herbert Diess, a former BMW executive who took over the newly created post of VW brand chief this year, the people said.
The 52-year-old head of VW’s luxury brand Audi, Rupert Stadler, is said to be in the running as well.
In addition to investigations from France to South Korea, public prosecutors in Germany said they were examining information and evaluating legal suits already filed against the company by a number of private individuals to decide whether to launch a full criminal inquiry against those responsible.
According to the US authorities, VW has admitted that it equipped about 482,000 cars in the US with sophisticated software that covertly turns off pollution controls when the car is being driven.
It turns them on only when it detects that the vehicle is undergoing an emissions test.
With the so-called “defeat device” deactivated, the car can spew pollutant gases into the air, including nitrogen oxide, in amounts as much as 40 times higher than emissions standards, said the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The EPA is conducting an investigation that could lead to fines amounting to a maximum of more than $18bn.
The US Department of Justice has also launched a criminal inquiry.
Private law firms are also lining up to take on the German company, with a class action suit already filed by a Seattle law firm. Volkswagen has set aside €6.5bn in provisions for the third quarter to cover the potential costs of the revelations.
Volkswagen SEAT unit fitted over 500,000 cars it manufactured with the pollution control defeat device, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported yesterday.
Standard & Poor’s warned it may cut Volkswagen’s credit rating over the pollution cheating scandal, as fellow rating agency Fitch did on Wednesday.