TRENTO: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne said yesterday a good performance by its US operations was crucial for the success of the company’s recently announced business plan.
The carmaker launched a breakneck global growth effort last month built around its upmarket Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Maserati brands. Under the 2014-2018 business plan, it aims to boost sales by 60 percent and increase net profit five-fold by 2018. “The execution of the business plan announced on May 6 depends on the fact that the US operations perform well,” Marchionne said at a business event in the Italian town of Trento.
Marchionne said the company needed cash from Chrysler’s US operations to fund its strategy in Europe, where Fiat was still battling with a weak and fragile economic recovery and over-capacity of the market for mass-market brands. Chrysler filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and received a US taxpayer-funded bailout. Fiat took over the US automaker at the time and completed the buyout at the beginning of this year to become the world seventh-largest carmaker.
The group is preparing to move its main listing from Milan to New York by the end of this year.
Marchionne said Chrysler’s financial strength and commercial clout overseas would help Fiat boost sales of Alfa Romeo, which will build eight new models by the end of 2018 thanks to investments worth €5bn.
“On Friday I saw the prototype for one of the new models engineers are developing in secret, and I can say we are on the right track,” he said, adding that the model would probably be unveiled in the third quarter of next year.
Reuters
