Just two days ago, we reported that Fiat Group CEO, Sergio Marchionne, said that he would make the North American market Alfa Romeo’s top priority.
Now the Italian automaker’s boss admits that his company is facing huge troubles in Europe as in the first nine months of 2011, the company's sales decreased by 12% compared to the same period last year, with its share in the European market dropping from 8.2% to 7.3%.
Even in its home market of Italy, which used to be a stronghold, Fiat sales for the first nine months of the year have hit their lowest mark in the past 20 years.
Marchionne does not have any delusions that next year the situation will improve: “2012 will not be a great year for the European market”, he told reporters. “Since 2008, Italy has lost 700,000 cars, which for Fiat means a loss of 210,000 cars. There is no point in looking for new models”, he added.
With Europe being –at the moment- a lost cause for Fiat , Marchionne is looking overseas to compensate for his company’s losses.
Right now, the Fiat-Chrysler alliance's biggest profit contributors are the U.S. and Brazilian markets, and that’s where it will focus its efforts. Marchionne denied, however, reports that Fiat will leave Italy, despite losing money - and fast.
At this point, all of Fiat’s five Italian plants are loss making. The management wants more flexible labor deals and increased productivity, something the worker unions react to, with the FIOM metalworkers’ union organizing a strike on Friday.
“It’s a very bad idea”, commented Marchionne on the strike. “It’s certainly no way to encourage investments in Italy.”
Despite Fiat shares losing almost 30% of their value in the first nine months of 2011, Marchionne is not worried. “We have enough liquidity to deal with our requirements for quite a while," the group's boss. "The good news is part of our business is in good shape and generating cash… Europe is a source of concern.”
Now, you’ll never guess which part of "their business" he’s talking about…
Story References: Reuters
3 Comments:
Yet another reason that Fiat will likely be placing more emphasis on US based operations.
Predictable... Alfa and Lancia are pretty much collecting dust from 15years. For the time it takes for those 2 brands to release a successor in some class the competition is already preparing the successor of the successor...
Marchionne (and the rest of the neoliberal Friedman-Pinochet fanbois) prove once again that they are, at the very best, trained only to destroy anything they get hired to run.
It's not the "inflexibility" of the labor deals; it's the fact that big companies pay ridiculous money to losers like Marchionne, Wester and that tranny-loving, coke-snorting faggot Lapo Elkann (not to mention the numerous shills that were brought here and on Facebook to sing the praises of a management whose incompetence can only be compared to that of the current Greek Quisling "government") instead of spending that money on stuff that's worth investing in: R&D and honoring the legacy of the companies owned by the group.
Lancia has been getting the shaft by a string of anti-Lancia complex-ridden morons for 20 years now, maybe more. First they decided to ditch its sporty character (an integral part of its identity ever since it was founded - something that the blithering idiot Olivier Francois flatly denies, possibly because he's an ignorant fuck that doesn't know shit about Lancia's history), then they made it make do with being a purveyor of blinged-up Fiats.
Here's the complete idiocy of Fiat's (mis)management:
They fail to understand that selling Fiats as cheaper versions of Lancias and Alfa Romeos is feasible, but selling Lancias and Alfa Romeos as blinged-up and riced-up (respectively) versions of Fiats makes no marketing sense at all. Whoever does the model development policy and the marketing stuff needs to be executed by hanging, drawing and quartering and have his head exhibited at the next Geneva expo to set an example for everyone who purchases the overpriced substitute for toilet paper that is also known as an MBA.
Also, Fiat is a great example of why car companies must be run by engineers and car nuts, not economists, much less neoliberal con artists and overrated book-cooking accountants like Marchionne.
I can say an awful lot more about how Fiat ruined both Alfa Romeo and Lancia... And I will. So, watch this space. Marchionne, Wester, Francois, the Elkann brothers and the rest of the Agnelli mobster family need to get a size 15 boot shoved up their butts. And it's high time they received it.
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