Shaking off dieselgate, VW races back into profit -The Asian Age

German auto giant Volkswagen on  Friday said it raced back into the black in 2016 as car sales hit an all-time  high, in the latest sign of its "dieselgate" scandal fading into the rearview  mirror.

But the costly fallout from the emissions cheating crisis also prompted the  firm to announce a cap on executive earnings, in a major departure from  Volkswagen's notoriously generous pay packages.

Under the new rules, payouts will be more closely linked to the group's  financial performance with the chief executive's remuneration limited to 10  million euros ($10.5 million).

Other board members will see their annual pay capped at 5.5 million euros, VW said after a meeting of the supervisory board at its Wolfsburg headquarters. The changes come as VW aims to clean up its image after it admitted 18 months  ago to having installed software in 11 million diesel engines worldwide that could dupe emissions tests.

In a sign that the tide is turning, the carmaker reported a net profit of 5.1  billion euros ($5.4 billion) for 2016, recovering from a stinging 1.6-billion- euro loss in the aftermath of the cheating revelations in 2015.

 "While the past fiscal year posed major challenges for us, despite the crisis  the group's operating business gave its best-ever performance," chief executive  Matthias Mueller said in a statement.

The VW group -- which includes the brands Porsche, Audi and Skoda -- beat  analyst expectations with record revenues of 217.3 billion euros in 2016, up  nearly two percent on the year before.

-AFP, Wolfsburg