Hello, I'm Evan Davis and thank you for downloading this program.

In this edition of the Bottom Line, The Crisis at VW, the German Carmaker, was caught red-handed,

fiddling its emissions tests.

It's one of the most intriguing cases of a self-inflicted corporate injury.

We discuss the case and how business in general can avoid sliding into bad behaviour of this kind.

Hello and welcome to the programme.

Now, on the bottom line, we've discussed corporate disasters of one kind or another on quite a few occasions,

but few as interesting or as spectacular as the disaster that has engulfed Volkswagen in recent weeks.

The scandal of the company building in so-called defeat devices to cheat emissions tests on some of its diesel cars. It's one of the most intriguing cases of a self-inflicted corporate injury, raising questions as to how it might have occurred, how it should be dealt with,

and how business in general can avoid sliding into bad

behaviour of this kind. So interesting is it, and still very much being played out, we thought

we'd rush together a special edition of our programme to discuss what it tells us about

business behaviour at Volkswagen and more generally. With me, guests with knowledge of cars,

petrol and corporate behaviour. So let me introduce each of them before we talk through the topic.

And my first guest is Sir John Egan, Sir John perhaps most famous for his car industry experience

as chief executive of Jaguar between 1984 and 1990,

but also battle-scarred from the experience of a self-inflicted corporate crisis

as chairman of Seven Trent the Water Company.

Sir John, your background is car industry.

You'd worked in that industry for many years.

Well, it was in the oil industry, really, where I started.

I started drilling oil wells, but my family business was in cars, yes. And you ended up at Jaguar. You were seen as something of a saviour of Jaguar at a terrible time for the UK car industry. It was a terrible time. We were the sick man of Europe, and probably the sickest of all of the industries was the car industry, and maybe the sickest of all the companies was British Leyland. Right. And Jaguar at that time had been part of British. And was owned by British Leyland, yes. It's a much stronger and healthier company today. Now, just very quickly, we'll come to this later, but the Seven Trent experience, you came in as chairman at the time of a crisis there. What was happening? Well, there was a whistleblower, and he was

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