Former Stellantis CEO Says Massive Corporate Separation Is Coming – Jalopnik

Carlos Tavares has not been CEO of Stellantis for about a year, but that hasn’t stopped him from commenting on the global conglomerate he played a key role in founding. He has a new book out, and the French title, A pilot in the storm (“A Pilot in the Storm”) basically tells you everything you need to know. Tavares suggests in his pages that an eruption of Stellantis is in the offing. From Bloomberg:

“I am afraid that the three-way balance between Italy, France and the US will break,” Tavares said [in the book]. The group’s survival as an independent company will depend on the extent to which management pays attention to unity ‘every day’, given the risk of being pulled in multiple directions.

Tavares further speculated, “A possible scenario…could be that a Chinese manufacturer might one day bid for the European operations, while the Americans take back the North American operations.” Those of us who remember Chrysler being owned by Cerberus Capital Management before its 2009 bankruptcy may be rightly disappointed by the restored American ownership of Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram. But given Stellantis’ current problems, something probably needs to be done.

Let’s run the Wayback Machine. After bankruptcy, Chrysler was eventually merged with Fiat, and the deal’s architect, the late Sergio Machionne, took the new company public while also spinning off Ferrari in its own IPO. Both attempts were successful, Ferrari hugely. But Marchionne died before he could complete his life’s work.

In 2021, the M&A went to the next level and Stellantis was born. Tavares oversaw that venture, and he was probably the last empire builder in the industry who had the guts to take it on, having studied at the feet of Carlos Ghosn, the now-disgraced engineer of the Renault-Nissan alliance. But Stellantis is currently in serious trouble and continues to frustrate the continued attempts of John Elkann, the billionaire Fiat scion who controls its destiny, to escape the problem. He desperately wants to go outside, but Stellantis keeps dragging him back inside.

It seems that Tavares is doing reputation rehabilitation here and stirring the pot at the same time. In his book, he reportedly presents himself as a defender of the French parts of the Stellantis behemoth – the PSA Group, which he acquired in 2014 and where he gained some substantial credibility as a visionary dealmaker when he 2017 Opel acquired from GM and significantly improved the performance of a division that the general had been unable to repair for decades.

In terms of splitting up Stellantis, the business case for a Chinese player taking over the French and Italian parts is quite logical, but such a move could lead to a lot of of resistance in Europe. Chrysler somehow returning to full American ownership sounds appealing. But the US auto industry is going through such a chaotic period right now with tariffs and the slowdown of EVs that we could find ourselves back in a nightmare situation of private equity ownership, followed by aggressive cost cutting, followed by the sale of the brands, possibly to the Chinese. (Jeep alone would be worth billions.) Stellantis always looked a bit ridiculous (too big, too unruly, too many competing national agendas) and time has confirmed all early concerns about the deal.

The big takeaway here is that the era of automotive Caesars, at least in the West, is completely over. Tavares was the last of his kind. And he seems to want everyone to know it.