Word: schrempp
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Ironically, all this came about because two companies just...needed each other. Schrempp, the tough-talking 54-year-old iconoclast who became Daimler-Benz chairman in 1995, had already slashed the company's divisions from 35 to 25--taking tens of thousands of jobs along the way. It was an outrageous move in a country where labor rules. Schrempp wanted a new empire that would no longer depend on luxury cars, which were becoming prohibitively expensive to produce...
Eaton was worried that in 10 years only six of the current 30 automakers would be around. Although Chrysler was hugely successful, he feared it would never have the financial muscle to best Ford and GM. That's why Schrempp needed a mere 17 min. around a coffee table in suburban Detroit in January 1998 to convince Eaton that a combination was a good idea...
...German law made it impractical and expensive. Inevitably, a German-registered company was going to be dominated by German managers, and it is. When it came to money, though, Eaton won a handsome premium for Chrysler shareholders (and top Chrysler executives) in a head-to-head negotiation with Schrempp. And in a symbolic win, he persuaded Schrempp to crop the "Benz," thus the name DaimlerChrysler...
...deal was cast publicly as a "merger of equals" because neither Eaton nor Schrempp wanted to use the word acquisition. Schrempp feared it would touch off a xenophobic outcry in Washington. Eaton did not want to seem as if he'd just sold out. But Eaton blundered. He announced last May that he would step down as co-chairman within three years and turn the company over to Schrempp. Stallkamp, sensing what the consequences might be, pleaded with him not to say it, but Eaton wasn't swayed. "I believed strongly there should not be two CEOs," he explains...
...Americans' influence with the Germans. He "abdicated," in the words of a DaimlerChrysler official. At a top-management seminar in Seville, Spain, last December, Eaton delivered a passionate speech on the new company and how its leaders had to band together to make it work. The oration left even Schrempp uncharacteristically at a loss for words. But by February the Germans were referring derisively to the speech as "Eaton's farewell...