(Photo: Robin Buckson, The Detroit News, file)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\nBut Fiat Chrysler Chairman John\u00a0Elkann, heir to the Agnelli family that founded Fiat, sounded a somber\u00a0tone\u00a0Saturday, saying in a statement he was\u00a0“profoundly saddened to learn of Sergio\u2019s state of health. It is a situation that was unthinkable until a few hours ago, and one that leaves us all with a real sense of injustice.”<\/p>\n
Marchionne was one of the longest-serving CEOs in the auto industry, appointed in 2004 as the fifth Fiat chief in a two-year period. He managed to return the carmaker to profit in 2005 by cutting costs, laying off workers\u00a0and then looking\u00a0for a partner.\u00a0The company\u00a0had lost more than 6 billion euros ($7.04 billion)\u00a0in 2003.<\/p>\n
In 2009, Marchionne managed to take\u00a0ownership of Chrysler Group LLC assets without putting up cash as it emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy under the guidance of the federal government. He pledged to\u00a0reopen factories and share\u00a0technology with the struggling U.S. carmaker.<\/p>\n
By acquiring Chrysler,<\/b>\u00a0Marchionne gave Fiat the global scale it needed to survive. Still, as the world\u2019s seventh-largest automaker, the company may lack the size it needs to compete in an industry being reinvented by the emergence of autonomous driving and electrification.<\/p>\n
In leading a\u00a014-year turnaround, Marchionne returned the U.S. carmaker to health, revived Alfa Romeo in the United States\u00a0and pushed the company toward\u00a0slashing\u00a0net industrial debt to zero.<\/p>\n
He said in early June while laying out his road map for the future\u00a0that his mission there was complete, and his successor would inherit a plan already in motion to make Fiat Chrysler the most profitable automaker in the U.S. by 2022.<\/p>\n
FCA plans\u00a0to deploy some $52.5 billion (45 billion euros) in capital expenditure over the next five years to achieve its 2022 goals of leveraging the highly profitable Jeep and Ram brands in the U.S. and abroad with higher-margin products that fill holes in their respective portfolios.<\/p>\n
In recent months, Marchionne was preparing to slow down but wanted first to complete the five-year plan to rid the carmaker of industrial debt, making it financially stronger and able to survive the next downturn. “I am a fixer,” he said.\u00a0“Until something is definitively fixed, I can\u2019t stop.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The British executive who supercharged Jeep and made\u00a0the most American of brands a worldwide sales leader will rely on that experience to lead all of\u00a0Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. Mike Manley\u00a0was appointed Saturday as the Italian-American automaker’s next CEO.\u00a0 Analysts \u2014 and the company’s board \u2014 say\u00a0the 54-year-old is the right man at the right time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"636678915454638795-Manley-and-trailhawk.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/-mm-\/68ce754819cb98a6c7d31c551c3119df8fc6265d\/c=317-0-7369-5302\/local\/-\/media\/2018\/07\/22\/DetroitNews\/DetroitNews\/636678915454638795-Manley-and-trailhawk.jpg?width=534&height=401&fit=crop\")
<\/p>\n