Indebted sports car maker Porsche SE played down reports its family owners had agreed the outlines of a merger with Volkswagen that would hand victory to VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech.
"We are not aware" of any such accord by the powerful Porsche and Piech families, a Porsche spokesman said on Thursday in response to newspaper reports that the extended clan had approved in principle VW's plan to merge the two groups.
Piech, a co-owner of Porsche, has been pushing for Volkswagen to acquire the Porsche group's healthy Porsche AG sports car business, adding a 10th brand to the lineup at Europe's biggest carmaker.
His cousin Wolfgang Porsche, the clan patriarch who is chairman of family-owned Porsche SE, has repeatedly ruled out such a step. Porsche has said a sale of Porsche AG would let creditor banks call a 10.75 billion euro ($15.14 billion) loan it got in March.
VW declined to comment.
Porsche reiterated that Wendelin Wiedeking remained chief executive. It had already denied a magazine report on Wednesday that Wiedeking was on his way out.
Porsche shares were flat and Volkswagen stock edged down 0.2 percent by 0743 GMT, lagging a 0.8 percent gain in the DJ Stoxx European car sector index .SXAP.
The showdown in thorny merger talks between Porsche and Volkswagen looms on July 23 when the carmakers' supervisory boards meet separately in Porsche's home town of Stuttgart.
The Porsche and Piech families have been at loggerheads for months over how to resolve Porsche's debt woes and the role Volkswagen would play in the whole deal.
Porsche had to abandon plans to take full control of its much larger peer as its debt mounted -- sources told Reuters on Wednesday its net debt has surpassed 10 billion euros ($14.09 billion) -- just as global car markets collapsed.
That left Porsche with a 51 percent stake in VW.
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