The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that in a tense meeting on Wednesday afternoon at Volkswagens headquarters in Wolfsburg, three of the company's biggest power players looked to thrash out an unlikely deal as the embattled carmaker veered toward full-blown crisis. A Reuters dispatch to The Globe says chief executive officer Oliver Blume, wanting to push through plans for historic job cuts that could hit 100,000 workers, was locked in talks with supervisory board chair Hans Dieter Poetsch and Olaf Lies, state premier of the powerful Lower Saxony region. The trio, alongside labour representatives, wanted to avoid a threatened "nuclear option" of an extraordinary general meeting if the supervisory board opposed the management board, which would have resulted in lengthy and damaging legal battles. As a result of what they settled on, the supervisory board struck an ambitious turnaround agreement that amounts to the biggest restructuring in the group's 89-year history and averts a clash between major stakeholders. Volkswagen, Europe's largest carmaker with over 650,000 workers, is battling dwindling margins as it is squeezed by Chinese rivals and tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump.