Word: schrempp
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Remarkably, Schrempp knew little of this. A man who constantly uses chess as a metaphor for his business drive, Schrempp craves information. Much of his comes through the executive "war room" near his office, where nuggets of intelligence about DaimlerChrysler's vast empire are constantly ingested and analyzed. But Holden had demanded and received complete autonomy when he took over Chrysler, and he used it to wall himself off from the Daimler side in Stuttgart...
...when Holden was forced to idle 20,000 workers at seven plants, Schrempp was blindsided--and then enraged. He got the news from auto analysts after the fact. The extent of the losses too had been belied by Holden's rosy forecasts. A Stuttgart insider acknowledges, "Our tools are excellent, but they are only as good as the information we were receiving...
...fact, Chrysler was never the company Schrempp thought he was buying, a curious miscalculation for a man who wants you to have no doubt that he knows everything there is to know about business. From near failure in 1991, the Detroit automaker had staged a sensational turnaround to become a market leader with its minivans, Jeeps and Dodge Ram trucks. More important, it had become the lowest-cost auto producer in the world...
...deal was in motion, discord and age had sent several top members of Chrysler's dream team--vice chairman Bob Lutz, chief engineer Francois Castaing and manufacturing whiz Dennis Pawley--into the Detroit sunset. The demands of the merger made things worse. Meetings, transatlantic travel and continued distrust over Schrempp's intentions distracted executives in Chrysler's Auburn Hills, Mich., headquarters. Chairman Bob Eaton, who had pushed for the Daimler merger, became increasingly detached from the company's operations--but not so much that he couldn't fire Chrysler president Tom Stallkamp last year. Schrempp may not have agreed with...
...regarded Holden as a bona fide member of Chrysler's dream team, one reason it granted him so much autonomy. In fact, Holden, a former vice president of sales and marketing, was viewed within and without Chrysler as a junior functionary in the automaker's success in the 1990s. Schrempp did not know it, but Holden's appointment had engendered tremendous resentment at Chrysler headquarters...