VW seeks new share issue as sales race ahead

Europe's biggest carmaker Volkswagen AG unveiled plans Friday to seek up to an additional 10 billion euros (15 billion dollars) from its shareholders as part of its moves to take control of luxury sports auto group Porsche.

At the same time, VW reported an 11.9 per cent jump in September sales compared with the same month last year, with the figures bolstered by strong demand from China and the carmaker's domestic market in Germany.

'We have navigated our way through the crisis and are developing better than the competition,' said Detlef Wittig, the VW executive in charge of sales.

VW's world-wide sales rose to 615,000 in September amid government incentives schemes aimed at encouragin car buyers back into showrooms.

Meanwhile, VW said it plans to hold a shareholders' meeting next month to gain approval to issue up to 135 million new preferred shares by December 2014.

Based on Thursday's preferred stock price, this would value the issue at about 10 billion euros.

Under a deal with Porsche, VW is to pay 3.3 billion euros for a 42-per-cent stake in the sports carmaker as it moves to integrate the group in its operations by 2011.