Volkswagen’s supervisory board will hold an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday at which finance chief Hans Dieter Poetsch is expected to be appointed as new head of the 20-member controlling panel, two sources said yesterday.

Europe’s biggest carmaker faces the worst business crisis in its 78-year history after it admitted cheating diesel emissions tests in the US, with 11 million vehicles affected worldwide.

As well as appointing Poetsch, the board meeting on Wednesday will discuss the latest findings of VW’s internal investigation which has already led to more than 10 suspensions of senior managers, a source close to the board said.

Poetsch was originally due to be named to the supervisory board at an extraordinary general meeting planned for November 9 but Volkswagen said on Thursday that would be pushed back.

We will do everything possible to win back your trust

At an internal company meeting last week at the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, Poetsch described the situation as an “existence-threatening crisis for the company” albeit a surmountable one, the Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported.

Volkswagen took out full pages in the Bild am Sonntag and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspapers, replacing what it said should have been an advert celebrating the 25th anniversary of German reunification with this message: “We will do everything possible to win back your trust.”

A survey by German market research firm Puls showed 41 per cent of consumers see the brand as damaged for the long term, while 11 per cent say they no longer want to buy a VW, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported.

Martin Schulz, the head of the European Parliament, said that the scandal would hit the German economy hard but the carmaker was likely to survive the crisis.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said she expected a limited impact on the German economy.