On August XNUMX five years ago it took place in the Lingotto Auditorium the latest Fiat shareholders' meeting convened in Turin, where she was born 115 years earlier.
An historic assembly. It came approved the merger of Fiat with the American Chrysler and a new company was born, the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), from whose acronym the T for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino disappeared, as if to underline that the registered office of the group moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the tax domicile in the United Kingdom to London.
While the board of directors, from that moment, will in fact be held in London, the subsequent shareholders' meetings will take place in the Netherlands, benefiting from more flexible corporate legislation and in particular from the greater weight that shares with greater "seniority" have in the meeting corporate (solution later adopted by other Italian companies and recently also by Mediaset).
The move of the meeting to Amsterdam also entailed a collateral advantage (entirely anecdotal) of a drastic drop in the presence of the "historic disturbers" of the meeting, small shareholders (sometimes owners of a single share) who traditionally intervened in Turin to challenge provocatively management decisions of the company and who have now found themselves in the position of shouldering the expenses of a long trip to participate in the meetings in Holland.
THE EARLY 900s
The merger with Chrysler and the birth of FCA is the realization of that "American dream" that was present in Fiat, the most American of Italian companies, since the beginning of its history.
Already in the early 900s in fact, Fiat, unique among European manufacturers, had established itself in the States with an automobile plant in Poughkeepsie, New York, whose activity ceased, for political reasons, at the outbreak of the Second World War. The historical archives report that in the XNUMXs the taxis circulating in New York were Fiat and not Ford.
In the years Half past eight p.m, and still over the years Fifty, Fiat engineers were going to Detroit in the Ford factories to see how to apply the principles of mass production and Fordist-Taylorist work organization in the Lingotto and Mirafiori factories.
THE FORDIST ORGANIZATION AND THE WCM
On the American model, the corporate organization will begin to use strictly military terms such as the production division, commercial division, technical division, the plants are divided into departments and departments into teams, the meeting rooms are called "report rooms" and asking your boss for an appointment is "getting in touch", while the performance of the work is hierarchical-functional based on the clear division between who disposes and who executes.
The Fordist organization, wanted by Vittorio Valletta (the Professor who led Fiat for 50 years), albeit with changes made in the XNUMXs by lean production, it survived until the arrival of Sergio Marchionne, who wanted to revolutionize factory work with a new work organization, totally corporate design and based on elimination of physical fatigue, of the obsessive repetitiveness of the operations, of the proactivity and participation of the named workers WCM (World Class Manufacturing).
By the law of retaliation, decades after their organization was imported from the American plants, the Fiat men exported the best practices of the new WCM organization to the Chrysler plants, whose principles, based on the involvement , Participation, were in the meantime extended to other business sectors, from logistics to design, to sales and so on.
THE "RED STAR" AND GLADIO DEPARTMENTS
Relations between Fiat and the United States are strengthened in the fifties when, under indications and pressure from the American ambassador in Rome Claire Boothe Luce, who had conditioned American aid under the Marshall Plan to containing communism in Italy, Valletta adopted a policy of isolating communist workers in factories Fiat with the creation of the so-called "red star" departments.
These are the years that in Fiat, as emerged from the parliamentary commission of inquiry on Gladio in the XNUMXs, the secret structure of the NATO organization, the Stay-behind, was created, made up of company executives and anti-communist trade unionists.
Thanks to its American relations, Valletta, after meeting President Kennedy in the White House in 1962, will have the green light from the State Department, despite the opposition of the French (at the time the Germans had no say in the matter) to sign an agreement with the Soviet government to build, first European company, one automobile plant in Russia.
THE 70s, 80s AND 90s
Overcome the criticalities of the years Seventy, due to the oil crisis, to union struggles but, above all, after the disappearance of Valletta, to a confused corporate vision, based on the conviction of overtaking the car in favor of public transport (sic!), Fiat, thanks to Victor Ghidella at the helm of the auto sector, at the beginning of the years Eighty, overcomes the crisis and relaunches itself by contending with Volkswagen for first position on the European market.
Unfortunately the successes on the European market will not be replicated on the American market. Fiat will meet a two clamorous failures with the Fiat Ritmo and the Alfa 164; moreover, years later President Obama at the top of Fiat will confide that the Ritmo was his first car as a student.
It fails moreover in 1986 also the attempt by Vittorio Ghidella to acquire Ford Europe, caused the clash between Ghidella himself accused of wanting a “self-centric Fiat” and the then CEO of Fiat Romiti who was oriented towards shifting the company's core business to the privatization of utilities.
The forced exit of Ghidella two years later marks the progressive decline of Fiat Auto in the product, in the quality, in the technology, in the economic results that will last over fifteen years. From contending with Volkswagen for European primacy on the market, and being the first foreign company on the French and German markets, Fiat Auto will be reduced to being the last among the European manufacturers, worth nothing since the whirlwind of the top management: in the space of few years they will happen without results five managing directors in the parent company and four in Fiat Auto.
The solution identified by the shareholder will be to look across the Atlantic.
THE NEW MILLENNIUM AND THE ALLIANCE WITH GM
On 13 March 2000 a alliance between General Motors and Fiat, which envisages the American subscription of a 20% stake in Fiat Auto in exchange for Fiat's entry into GM with a stake of around 5,1% for a value of 2,4 billion dollars, and such as to make it its first private shareholder.
The crux of the agreement, however, was the recognition in favor of Fiat of the option right (the so-called "put") to transfer the remaining 80% of Fiat Auto to GM starting from the fourth year and within the following five years of the alliance .
With the agreement, Fiat once again confirmed that its point of reference was the United States. Unlike what Sergio Marchionne will do with Chrysler, the "put" guaranteed the shareholder but put the Italian plants and workers to the wind.
The closer the date of the "put" approached, the more the conviction that the company would exercise the option to sell Fiat Auto to GM.
The Fiat men who attended meetings at the GM Europe headquarters in Zurich were shown the spaces in the entrance where the Fiat and Alfa Romeo brands would soon be on display alongside those of GM, such as Cadillac, Buick, Chevrolet, Opel, Vauxhall, etc.
The restructuring and production reorganization plans (prepared in advance by the Americans) then envisaged the cutting of some plants, obviously below the "Gothic line" where no GM man, American or German, during the years of the joint venture, had to visit, if only for acculturation, the establishments of Cassino, Pomigliano or Melfi.
THE ARRIVAL OF MARCHIONNE
On June 1, 2004, the previous managing director, Giuseppe Morchio, resigned from the shareholder, due to his attempt to assume full powers after the death of Umberto Agnelli, Sergio Marchionne becomes CEO of the Fiat Group.
Sergio Marchionne, despite sitting on the board of directors for some years as an independent director, is a totally unknown character not only among workers but also among top-level management.
Debuts with the presentation of a rigorous cost containment plan need industrial revival of Fiat, such as to find positive feedback, after years, even among the unions, including Fiom.
In the following months Sergio Marchionne begins to be known among the Turin workers when a mirafiori inaugurates the line of new Point, demonstrating the willingness to invest in the historic Fiat plant.
That day of the inauguration will be one of the few times that Sergio Marchionne, surrounded by workers, will be photographed in suit and tie (it happened later that he wore a jacket and tie only when visiting the Pope and the President of the Republic, while he put the tie back on the black sweater on the occasion of the presentation of his latest Business Plan in June 2018, fulfilling his promise that he would wear it again after years only to the zeroing of the debt).
The link between Sergio Marchionne and the Fiat workers for 14 years is already established after a few months, when wins tug of war with GM to avoid the transfer of the auto sector to the Americans.
Sergio Marchionne, in September 2004, opened the game when he announced that there will be no postponements on the exercise of the "put" by Fiat. A tough negotiation will follow with the Americans committed to avoiding the forced takeover of Fiat Auto and Sergio Marchionne determined not to withdraw from his position of exercising the "put".
It was a kind of poker (which was Sergio Marchionne's favorite card game).
The Americans just had to go and see if Fiat was bluffing or not in the declared willingness to exercise the "put" clause, but they didn't want to take the risk and at the last minute, before the deadline and in the face of a threatened legal action by Fiat intent on asserting their rights, in February 2005 they gave in and reached the signing of an onerous agreement, in order not to take over Fiat Auto. GM paid Fiat 1,5 billion euros in cash and returned the stake it had in Fiat Auto.
From this moment, that popularity and trust in Sergio Marchionne was born among Fiat workers which will tangibly materialize in the victory of the "yes" in favor of his plans to relaunch production in the referendums of Pomigliano, Mirafiori and Grugliasco.
THE CHRYSLER OPERATION: FCA IS BORN
In 2009 the Chrysler operation will make Sergio Marchionne the real "demiurge" of today's Fiat, comparable if not superior to Valletta himself, not only for the greatness of the manager but of the real entrepreneur.
Following the American crisis of 2008, Sergio Marchionne has the stroke of genius to "buy" a share of the American car market, noting the Chrysler now in bankruptcy proceedings.
On June 10, 2009 Fiat gets 20 percent of the American company. Sergio Marchionne is appointed CEO with the endorsement of President Barack Obama.
It is the solid foundation on which an alliance will start which will lead Fiat to be among the leading automotive groups in the world.
In subsequent years Fiat will progressively increase its stake in Chrysler to reach 100% in 2014, when the latest shareholders' meeting held in Turin on August 1 will approve the merger of Fiat with Chrysler to form the FCA.
Sergio Marchionne has always been clear (as an Italian at heart) that the profits produced in the restored Chrysler had to cover the losses that the Italian plants would still suffer for a long time awaiting the launch of new products, as foreseen by its latest Business Plan 2018-2022.
In this sense, his heirs are also the workers of Mirafiori, Grugliasco, Pomigliano, and in general of all the Italian workers of Fiat, whose work and "paycheck" were safeguarded by Sergio Marchionne.
Without Sergio Marchionne, fiat would have disappeared from the car market.
As above Sergio Marchionne the man who saved the fiat.