Activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management has written to the boards of German carmaker Volkswagen, attacking “corporate excess on an epic scale” and calling for wide-ranging changes to management pay.

In a letter to the members of the firm's management and supervisory boards, London-based TCI, which runs more than $10 billon in assets, said Volkswagen had "a major corporate governance problem" that had abused shareholders and that over the past five years it had been "held back by underperforming and overpaid management".