Just days after the death of Fiat's chairman raised questions on the direction of the company, Fiat named a chief executive on Tuesday, reaffirmed its commitment to its money-losing car unit and said that it would accelerate a restructuring plan that aims for a return to profit in 2006.
The board of Fiat named Sergio Marchionne, until Tuesday morning the chief executive of the Swiss quality and testing services company SGS, to be chief executive.
PHOTO: AFP
Marchionne, 52, has been a member of the Fiat board since May last year and during the previous shuffle for a chief executive early last year was mentioned as a possible candidate.
His appointment followed the death on Thursday of Umberto Agnelli, who had been chairman of Fiat for slightly more than a year.
Marchionne is the fifth chief executive of Fiat in the last two years and faces the task of turning around a company that has lost 6 billion euros (US$7.3 billion) in the past two years.
He takes control of Fiat after the abrupt departure of Giuseppe Morchio, who quit unexpectedly on Sunday.
restructuring plan
Morchio and Agnelli put together a four-year restructuring plan a year ago that included 3.1 billion euros (US$3.8 billion) in cost cuts and 12,300 layoffs, most of them now carried out.
"The restructuring plan was approved last year by the board of directors and I will take that plan forward," Marchionne said at a news conference here, where Fiat is based. "I'm sure that Fiat will make it through this crisis and it will again become what it once was."
Fifteen years ago, Fiat was the leading carmaker in Europe, but it has since fallen to seventh place. In the mid-1980s when the Italian market was protected by high tariffs, Fiat had a 60 percent share. That has declined to less than a third.
"There is a huge amount of potential in the management that Fiat already has, we just need to go tap it," Marchionne said. "I have done that before. In my 30 months at SGS, I took a lethargic company and turned it into a leader in its field."
Morchio replaced 12 of Fiat's 19 top managers in the year after announcing his restructuring plan, and also managed to cut the company's losses by half.
Marchionne declined to give further details of his plans for Fiat, noting that he had held the post for less than a hour.
The new chief's talent as a turnaround expert was known to the Agnelli family even before he joined Fiat's board last year; SGS is partly owned by the family through the same holding company that controls its 30 percent stake in Fiat.
One of the first issues Marchionne will have to tackle is a pact with General Motors that gives Fiat the right to sell its 90 percent stake in Fiat Auto to GM beginning next year. The Agnellis have said that they have no intention of selling Fiat Auto, but are only willing to cancel the pact for a fee. GM maintains the pact is already dead because Fiat breached its terms.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS