Word: fiats
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Since he took over as chief executive of Italy's Fiat in 2004, the chain-smoking Canadian Italian has used Apple as a model, focusing on the way Steve Jobs transformed it from an also-ran computer company into a global icon of cool. He encourages Fiat managers to take a close look at Apple's branding prowess and even asks them to benchmark their activities against the company. His biggest success at Fiat is the 500 - a tiny, very cool 21st century version of a 52-year-old Italian icon once driven by movie stars such as Marcello Mastroianni...
...this has a touch of Italian hyperbole, but the point is a serious one as Marchionne, 57, tackles his next big challenge: Chrysler. For at Chrysler, he's moving, just as he did at Fiat, to restructure the organization, overhaul production, revamp the lineup, motivate a beaten-down workforce and deal with prickly shareholders - this time including the U.S. Government...
...Marchionne is to succeed, he needs above all to reposition Chrysler from maker of clunky, overpowered gas-guzzlers to purveyor of must-own, energy-efficient vehicles. "The challenge for Fiat Chrysler is to move away from popular products and into 'pop' products, full of cool environmental technology and on the right side of history," says Carlo Alberto Carnevale, a professor of strategic management at Bocconi University's business school in Milan and a close watcher of Fiat. "In that sense, it's the same bet as Steve Jobs'. That's why Marchionne uses that metaphor...
...union got slightly more flexibility in the stock-sale terms negotiated for the Chrysler VEBA. Those terms say the VEBA can start selling stock within six months of any Chrysler IPO, or if Fiat becomes the majority owner, or by June 30, 2012. Though the VEBA could sell its stake to Fiat in a private deal anytime, Gettelfinger has suggested he would like to see an IPO as the best way to maximize the value of the shares...
Thousands of Opel workers in Germany are breathing a huge sigh of relief after the last-minute deal to rescue GM's European operations. German unions had always supported Austrian-Canadian company Magna International's takeover of GM Europe, wary that the rival bid from Fiat was just an attempt, as one union official put it, to "pinch German engineering." The unions regard Magna as an innovative company that put forward the best plan to secure the long-term future of Opel. At the carmaker's headquarters in the town of Rüsselsheim near Frankfurt, workers were hugging friends...