AUSTRALIANS OFF BOARD

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31232, 2 December 1966, Page 13

AUSTRALIANS OFF BOARD

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) MELBOURNE,

December 1.

Volkswagen (Australasia), Ltd., is removing all Australians from its top management.

The company yesterday announced the retirement of its managing-director, Mr A. M. Gray, and the assistant man-aging-director (merchandising), Mr W. J. R. Sullivan. Management of the company, which is in the middle of a 40-million-dollar expansion programme, will now be vested in three Germans and a Canadian.

The only other Australian

member of the board of directors, the alternate chairman, Mr W. J. King, has resigned from the company. Last May the company announced that three other Australian members of its management team—two alternate directors and a director —had “relinquished their appointments.”

Volkswagen Australasia), Ltd., is a fully-owned subsidiary of Europe’s biggest car manufacturer, Volkswagenwork A.G., of West Germany. The chairman of both the parent and Australian companies is Professor Heinz Nordhoff, who is credited with building the Volkswagen car empire from a pile of rubble left at the end of the Second World War. The statement from Volkswagen (Australasia), Ltd., announcing the latest changes in company management, said the moves had been made “to align Australian procedures with world policy.”

Concorde Orders. The Anglo-French consortium building the Concorde supersonic airliner hopes to have at least 75 planes ordered by the end of this year, said a spokesman for the British Aircraft Corporation.—London, December 1.