Sorry Sergio, She’s Just Not That Into You
Country music star/social psychologist Mickey Gilley once observed that “the girls all get prettier at closing time.” Well, for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne, last call will be in 2018, and as the date of his eventual retirement grows closer and closer, poor Sergio gets more and more desperate to mate with another automaker just one more time…
Lately, Marchionne has been making unusually public overtures to General Motors CEO Mary Barra, reportedly asking hedge funds with GM shares to put pressure on Barra to merge FCA with GM. And Barra herself has confirmed that Marchionne sent her an email earlier this year, laying out the case for a merger.
But Barra says that she, in agreement with the company’s board of directors, has decided that GM is already plenty big.
“We already have scale and we are leveraging that scale,” Barra said during a recent news conference, reports the Detroit Free Press.
So while Sergio may be looking for his next conquest, Barra is content to keep practicing self-love, adding, “When you look at the last several years, we have been merging with ourselves.”
“The best thing we can do is to be totally focused on the GM shareholder and to execute our plan,” Barra stated.
For his part, Sergio believes that the auto industry isn’t sustainable, and that FCA and GM need to start coupling if they’re ever going to make it into the future. And presumably, he’s prepared to stand outside of the GM Renaissance Center while holding a boombox blaring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” until that happens.
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