TURIN, Italy -- Fiat, Italy's largest manufacturer and a symbol of the country's struggle to adapt to globalization, is leaving home after 115 years.
The controlling Agnelli family and other investors, holding their final shareholders meeting here today, sealed the end of Fiat as an Italian company with a vote approving a merger with Chrysler. Created by Italian-Canadian CEO Sergio Marchionne, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV will be incorporated under Dutch law, based in the U.K. and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
"The birth of FCA will end the precarious life of Fiat," Chairman John Elkann, the grandson of late Fiat patriarch Gianni Agnelli, had said before the meeting. "For the first time we have a different perspective: we don't need to play a game of survival."
The merger will create the world's seventh-largest automaker.
Elkann told shareholders today that the Agnelli family will remain committed to the carmaker.
"I want to confirm today my own and my family's commitment to continue to support Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, even more so now that there are big opportunities on the horizon," Elkann said, dismissing talk that the family wanted to sell down its stake.
China stake
Elkann said the People's Bank of China owns 2 percent of Fiat Chrysler, making the Chinese central bank one of the group's key investors.
Fiat Chrysler Automobile’s cosmopolitan structure reflects an industry shift away from national champions like Fiat, which for decades prided itself on an Italian and Turin heritage. By combining resources with the U.S. carmaker, the company formerly known as Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino can better compete with heavyweights like General Motors, Volkswagen Group and Toyota Motor Corp., Marchionne says. A brush with bankruptcy a decade ago proved the Italian focus was unsustainable.
"Marchionne doesn’t want to abandon Italy; he wants FCA and himself to be global players, and the center of gravity of FCA has to be repositioned in order to do that," said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business. "It is a little sad for Italy."
Vincenzo Longo, an investment strategist at IG Group in Milan, said Marchionne needs the lights of Wall Street, where Fiat Chrysler plans to locate its primary listing by mid-October. There’s more opportunity there than a "peripheral place like the Italian market has become," he said.
Stagnant economy
Hampered by insufficient reforms, the Italian economy has stagnated over the past 14 years and contracted 10 of the last 11 quarters. Unemployment rates are near record levels, leading thousands of Italians to leave in search of a better future.
The same goes for Fiat. Toughening regulation calls for large sales volumes to finance development of cleaner engines and expand in growth markets like China and India. Bolstered by the combination, Fiat plans to invest 55 billion euros ($74 billion) in the next five years to boost deliveries 61 percent to 7 million cars by 2018. That’s still less than VW’s target to sell 10 million vehicles this year.
There’s little option for Fiat as a stand-alone company. North American operations, which were non-existent before Fiat gained control of Chrysler about five years ago, accounted for 62 percent of the group’s second-quarter operating profit. The manufacturer’s once-core European operations lost 6 million euros, as the saturated market gradually recovers from a two- decade low. Without its U.S. division, Fiat would have been unprofitable in 2012 and 2013.
Failed Opel bid
To reduce its reliance on Italy for sales and as a production base, Marchionne started seeking a partner about 10 years ago, when he took charge of Fiat, which was financially strapped at the time.
The search, which included a failed bid for GM’s Opel unit, wasn’t successful until Chrysler’s 2009 bankruptcy. Faced with the prospect of liquidating America’s third-biggest carmaker, the U.S. government gave Fiat a chance to turn around the Michigan company.
Fiat's headquarters will move from a villa adjacent to Fiat’s iconic former Lingotto factory, which features an oval track on its roof and now houses shops, a hotel and a theater, in a sign that Italy can move on. The new location will be in Slough, England, until Fiat opens a London office by the end of the year. Milan will be relegated to a secondary listing for FCA’s shares.
