Official : Qatar buys 10% stake in Porsche!

Now that Volkswagen and Porsche have nearly come to a merger deal, it seems Qatar wants to get in the mix as well. Porsche announced that 10% of its shares have gone to Qatar Holdings, in order to straighten their financial position. Porshce also sold a 42% stake in Porsche AG for about $4.7 billion, and sold a package of cash-settled options on VW shares (Porsche owns 50% stake in VW) to Qatar, which they say will free up approximately 1 billion euros in cash.

While that its such a complex deal, it is also not easy to know who will be controlling Porsche and VW. Because when Porsche started buying shares off VW, they now ended-up with more shares than they could afford. It's still not entirely clear who will own what when the whole deal is done in 2011, but it appears that Qatar may end up as one of the biggest shareholders of the merged Porsche-VW company.

Source : [Porsche via Reuters]