Word: fiat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...summer vacations and sometimes whole school years to work on development projects in Siberia and the Soviet Far East. Komsomoltsy helped build the Bratsk hydroelectric station, are now participating in the construction of the Togliatti auto plant, which is scheduled to produce 600,000 Soviet versions of the Italian Fiat a year. Some of the youngsters go out of ideological zeal, some simply for the adventure of getting away from home. But for most, subtle and highly persuasive pressures are at work, primarily choice job assignments after graduation that can be allotted in part according to a Komsomol pl record...
When France's desperately indebt Citroën and Italy's thriving Fiat, which stands next only to the U.S.'s Big Three among world automakers, announced merger plans last month, they got short shrift from Charles de Gaulle. In exercising an effective veto, the De Gaulle government charged that the deal would threaten "the independence of a very important French company...
Still, in the eyes of Citroën President Pierre Bercot and Fiat Chairman Giovanni Agnelli, the French government's non was not absolute. They kept right on conferring and finally produced a plan that won De Gaulle's approval. It called for joining the companies in a "common organism" that would command $2.8 billion in annual sales and be managed by Fiat and Citroën on theoretically equal terms...
Lots of Leverage. Under the new arrangement, Fiat will fall short of achieving the 30-40% of Citroën stock that it had originally aimed for. Instead, it will get only 15%, with no strings attached. Yet Fiat will actually have much more leverage than that, since it will have a large share of a holding company that will control its new partner, Citroën. Most of the holding company's stock will come from France's tire-making Michelin family, which now owns over half of Citroën and which opened the original merger...
With its lagging sales and debts of at least $100 million, Citroen is eager to hitch up with another auto manufacturer. Charles de Gaulle would like a purely French solution: perhaps a merger of the three major French carmakers, to be called Automobile de France. If that happens, Fiat may be sorely tempted to woo Germany's Volkswagen. Such a combine would dwarf anything that France could put together...