Volkswagen Group, or Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft shortly VW AG is a German multinational automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. It designs, manufactures and distributes passenger and commercial vehicles, motorcycles, engines, and turbomachinery and offers related services including financing, leasing and fleet management. In 2015, it produced 9.93 million motor vehicles, the second-largest number of any company in the world, behind Toyota and ahead of General Motors. It has maintained the largest market share in Europe for over two decades. It ranked seventh in the 2016 Fortune Global 500 list of the world's largest companies.
Volkswagen Group sells passenger cars under the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Skoda and Volkswagen marques, motorcycles under the Ducati brand, and commercial vehicles under the marques MAN, Scania, Neoplan and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles. It is divided into two primary divisions, the Automotive Division and the Financial Services Division, and has approximately 340 subsidiary companies. VW also has two major joint-ventures in China (FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen). The company has operations in approximately 150 countries and operates 100 production facilities across 27 countries.
Volkswagen was founded in 1937 to manufacture the car which would become known as the Beetle. The company's production grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, and in 1965 it acquired the Auto Union, which subsequently produced the first post-war Audi models. Volkswagen launched a new generation of front-wheel drive vehicles in the 1970s, including the Passat, Polo, and Golf, the latter became its bestseller. Volkswagen acquired a controlling stake in SEAT in 1986, making it the first non-German marque of the company, and acquired control of Škoda in 1994, of Bentley, Lamborghini, and Bugatti in 1998, Scania in 2008 and of Ducati, MAN, and Porsche in 2012. The company's operations in China have grown rapidly in the past decade with the country becoming its largest market.
Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft is a public company and has a primary listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, where it is a constituent of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index, and secondary listings on the London Stock Exchange, Luxembourg Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange and SIX Swiss Exchange. The state of Lower Saxony holds 12.7% of the company's shares, granting it 20% of the voting rights. Volkswagen held a 19.9% non-controlling shareholding in Suzuki between 2009 and 2015. An international arbitration court ordered Volkswagen to sell the stake back to Suzuki. Suzuki paid $3.8bn to complete the stock buy-back just hours prior to a major scandal about emissions violations engulfing Volkswagen.
