Breaking with the management attitude of the past and adopting few but clear guidelines were the key to Fiat's comeback from near bankruptcy, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne explained on Friday.
Speaking at a business forum here at the Bocconi business school, the man responsible for the comeback said Fiat's recovery was "a textbook case" and was achieved "without any magic wand" by "abandoning a static corporate mentality based on market advantage and accepting the need to actively compete".
Fiat today, Marchionne observed, "is a responsible and reliable company capable of keeping its promises. It is an example of European industrial reorganization".
And this was also made possible thanks to having "managers who shared common goals, inspired leaders," the CEO added.
Three years ago, he recalled, Fiat "was going through the bleakest period in its history: sales were down, cash was short, there were problems with the banks and many had doubts whether or not it was better to sell out to GM".
Today the situation "has been totally reversed: we are making profits, paying dividends, expanding our market share, our relations with banks are excellent and in 2010 we expect to have a turnover of 70 billion euros," Marchionne said.
"This places us in a position where we can buy GM or Ford and by 2010 we will buy something, although there is nothing interesting out there right now" he added.
Fiat's model for the future, the CEO explained, was Toyota of Japan, which has just surpassed GM as the world's biggest automaker.
"The are the top dog and our rivals, but they are also our reference point," he said.
