Who says the little guy can’t profit from Porsche’s mucking-around with the Volkswagen stock? Jochem Heizmann, a lowly member of Volkswagen AG’s BOD and head of Group Production (which doesn’t mean he’s in charge of producing rock groups) just sold a measly 2000 shares of VeeDub stock for a paltry €537.93 a piece, clearing a trifling $1.39m, Automotive News Europe [sub] says. They unearthed this inconvenient truth after reading the disclosure statements which are now obligatory even in Germany. Previously, Dr. Prof. Heizmann (we are at Volkswagen, after all, which must have more professors than MIT) worked at Audi. He ran VeeDub’s plant in Zwickau, then was responsible for production at Audi again. Just your average engineer. If a guy like him can clear a mil in a few days, anyone can. Or not.
9 Comments on “Lowly VeeDub Board Member Over Night Millionaire...”
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Guys, lets be realistic, million bucks is not what it used to be. There are a lot of schmacks who made very decent living selling toilet paper titled mortgage backed derivatives in NYC. Bogle (Vanguard Funds founder) called them wealth croupiers. They did not produce anything of value, but charged another set of schmacks commission for their services. And how many got really wealthy from Internet discovery by great scientist Al Gore? I guess, Krauts learned some Yankee ingenuity.
An engineer, and a car guy yet, on the BOD of an auto company? I thought those were all reserved for the Harvard MBA’s and accountants. What do engineers know about running an auto business?
I suppose it helps if your automaker’s stock isn’t swirling down the toilet.
1996MEdition :
November 7th, 2008 at 11:25 am
An engineer, and a car guy yet, on the BOD of an auto company? I thought those were all reserved for the Harvard MBA’s and accountants. What do engineers know about running an auto business?
We’re talking about European (or Japanese) car companies, not American…
@Voice of Sweden
Lee Iaccoca was engineer, with MBA. So was DeLorean. There was a tendency to have engineers in high places within many technical industries in US. And in engineering and software it still is. By the same token, our hedge funds are run by nuclear physicists and quite accomplished mathematicians. You know how well our banking (in carnal love and relationship with above mentioned) does, what do you make of that?
autonut: “Bogle (Vanguard Funds founder) called them wealth croupiers.”
[Chuckling.] Bogle is a canny guy. How many other investment experts will admit that no one can consistently predict which way stocks will go?
@autonut
Nuclear physicists and mathematicians are good at nuclear physics and math – nothing more.
These guys tried to create mathematical models of human behavior. Apart from the math, they were way out of their league.
I majored in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in college. I work with and know many “geeks”. The last thing geeks should be doing is trying to model human behavior – most of those guys are barely human themselves.
-ted
Heizmann has not been the only one to massively profit from the VW share frenzy. VW had in early 2000s an offer to all of its employees to acquire shares on a subsidized basis. Anyone who just bought the 50 shares offered each year at a discount price now would have made 250.000 Euro if he sold at 1000 Euro a share. Thanks to the Hedge Funds, the small workers have paid of their homes.
@zerofoo
These guys seem to be pretty good at modeling market behavior:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies
35% return per year is not bad.
Ted, I don’t know where you went to college for your engineering degree but plenty of my fellow engineering grads do not seem to fit into the barely human engineering cliche. http://www.seas.upenn.edu/history/overseers.html