[article] FIAT/OPEL megamerger?

mike65

From Guardian

The Italian carmaker Fiat is seeking to merge its car division with General Motors Europe and ailing US car firm Chrysler to create an automotive giant second only to Japan's Toyota in terms of production.

Fiat's chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, will meet German government ministers today to discuss a bid for the German car maker Opel, part of GM Europe.

If the talks go to plan, Fiat would list shares in the combined company this summer. Marchionne described the plan as "an incredibly simple solution to a very thorny problem".

He told the Financial Times: "From an engineering and industrial point of view, this is a marriage made in heaven."

The unions are already issuing warnings needless to say.

Is this the way forwards? International consolidation has been a feature for over 20 years now so I guess at some point we were always going to end up with a couple of global mega-companies sharing all the bits and running a relative handful of hugely efficient plants.

Tragedy

How is Opel(part of GM, a global mega company) splitting off from it and joining Fiat suddenly becoming international consolidation?

mike65

GM is going to cease to be a global company very soon.

unkel

Well, Marchionne has been extremely successful with FIAT over the last few years. If he can buy Opel for tuppence, Chrysler for free and turn these brands around (and sell FIATs and Alfas in the US), he'd be onto a winner

AugustusMaximus

As Tragedy has said. There isn't much consolidation going on here. Just the sale of a subsidiary from one company to another.

If GM does sell Opel/Vauxhall and SAAB to FIAT, are GM essentially admitting defeat in Europe.

All they will have left is selling rebadged Daewoo's as Chevy's in the European market. Surely their only last avenue for attack come that situation would be to bring over their US Chevy's and sell them here ?

in fact, are GM planning on selling the Chevy Cruze here ?

L1011

Opel are using Fiat diesel engines, Fiat are using an Opel platform and GM petrol engines for quite a few cars as it is. Fiat need to acquire to expand quickly so this makes a fair bit of sense. The merger nearly went the other way as it is a few years ago so across Europe there's a lot of dual franchise dealers in preparation for that abortive merger.

zilog_jones

AugustusMaximus wrote: »

Surely their only last avenue for attack come that situation would be to bring over their US Chevy's and sell them here ?

Wouldn't they be even more saleproof than what Chrysler attempts to sell here?