STUTTGART (dpa-AFX) - The shareholders of VW umbrella company Porsche SE (PSE) have a poor chance of claiming damages in the wake of the diesel scandal. This is the result of a model decision of the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court published on Wednesday. The regional courts must now follow its lead. Basically, it was about accusations against Volkswagen's major shareholder of having informed too late about the emissions scandal and its discovery by the US authorities in 2014 and 2015. The decision of the Higher Regional Court can still be appealed to the Federal Court of Justice.

At the time, VW CEO Martin Winterkorn was also CEO of PSE and Hans Dieter Pötsch was CFO of both companies. The Higher Regional Court ruled that it was not sufficient for the obligation to publish a stock exchange announcement if the dual board members only knew about the diesel scandal and its uncovering because they had been informed in their function as VW board members. In this case, they were bound to secrecy. The dual board members would only have been allowed to pass on the information if they had been released from the duty of confidentiality by Europe's largest automaker.

In addition, in the view of the 20th Civil Senate, the VW umbrella company had not been obliged to inform the capital market as early as June 2008 about the exhaust gas manipulation in VW diesel vehicles. The interrogation of the board members Wendelin Wiedeking and Holger Härter, who were in office until the end of 2009, had not provided any evidence that they had knowledge of the illegal defeat devices.

PSE considered the claims to be "obviously unfounded" from the outset. It was a holding company and not an automaker. It was therefore not involved in the development, production or sale of diesel engines that had come to light. The holding company welcomed Wednesday's decision. A PSE spokesman said that the OLG had thus confirmed the view of Porsche SE.

The plaintiffs, on the other hand, stressed that they - unaware of the diesel fraud - had paid too much money for their PSE shares years ago. Their argument: if VW and then also the holding company had informed the markets earlier about the scandal, this would also have depressed the share price earlier and they would have had to pay less for their shares.

The OLG had declared a British fund as the model plaintiff, which asserted a claim of 5.7 million euros. In total, claims for damages of around 929 million euro are pending.

Porsche SE had already won a stage victory in its legal disputes last September. At that time, investors in Celle suffered a severe defeat in model proceedings relating to the VW takeover battle in 2008. The case involved damages of 5.4 billion euros plus interest.

Porsche SE CEO Pötsch recently said at the annual press conference: "We consider all the lawsuits filed against Porsche SE to be unfounded and in some cases also inadmissible. We are therefore convinced that we will prevail in all the proceedings still pending."/ols/DP/ngu