Porsche denies seeking 75 pct Volkswagen stake

With the German state of Lower Saxony holding more than 20 percent of the votes in VW, it is extremely unlikely that Porsche could get enough shares from other VW investors to reach the 75 percent threshold, Porsche said in a statement.

The company was reacting to a weekend report by Germany's Focus magazine that Porsche planned to raise its Volkswagen stake to 75 percent.

Porsche last week won the green light from its supervisory board to raise its voting stake in VW from 31 percent to an unspecified majority once it had cleared any anti-trust hurdles.

It has said it needs to prevent Volkswagen -- which provides content for a third of the vehicles Porsche sells -- from falling into unfriendly hands now that Europe's highest court has struck down a German law capping individual investors' voting rights at Europe's biggest carmaker.

The German government is working on replacement legislation that would still preserve a strong say at VW for its labor force and Lower Saxony.

Building a majority stake in VW would ostensibly cost Porsche about 10 billion euros at the current market price, but Porsche has secured cash-settlement options on VW shares that would reduce the takeover bill dramatically.

VW shares pared gains on the news and were up 1.4 percent at 153.89 euros by 1055 GMT, off a session high at 154.75 euros

(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by David Holmes)