Quote Of The Day: The Truth Is Marchionne On Edition

by Edward Niedermeyer

March 10th, 2009 8:46 PM

quote of the day the truth is marchionne on edition

“I think the first duty of a leader is to keep his company in the black. To accept—and announce—at the beginning of the year that you will lose money is the worst sign of leadership you could give to your troops,” Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne tells Automotive News Europe [sub]. “Car markets have gone from bad to horrible so far this year, but I will fight like hell to keep Fiat Group Automobiles profitable in 2009. Running an automaker these days is like driving in dense fog. You have just 100 meters of visibility so you must continuously adapt to what you suddenly face. Nevertheless, I refuse to accept even the idea that our auto operations will lose money.” Man, is he going to love working with Jim Press.

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4 of 13 comments

Kevin on Mar 10, 2009

Hey I like this guy. And here I thought all Euroweenies were a bunch of Commies.

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Carmad on Mar 10, 2009
jkross22: How irresponsible is it for the CEO of a publicly traded company to announce projections for financial performance based on market conditions. Well, is there any other way? CEOs and everybody else take the market and the conditions THEY think will happen with it in the future, and calculate their resulting interactions and their financial consequences. After all, financial projections are only the assumptions on the future calculated as consequent financial performance. Market goes down, sales go down, variable costs go down, fixed costs remain and profitability suffers. Little you can do except lower fixed costs, always difficult, or increase sales. No science here. There is no honest way to calculate the future's financial situation of a company without starting with the state of the market. Even governments do it, the budget starts with an assumption on tax revenue and a deficit goal, then which expenses will happen and which will not. Tax revenue are market conditions.

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Happy-cynic on Mar 10, 2009

He is showing something we have not seen from too many executive on the west side of the Atlantic. In particular about driving in fog. Our executives will blame everything but themselves.

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Ronman on Mar 11, 2009

This guy will be moving to VeeDub before this said prophecy will materialize. but looking at it from an Un-sarcastic view if everyone thought that way, the auto industry wont be in the fix it's in today... American auto folks have resigned to the idea because it's inevitable, whereas in Europe i think the situation is not as dire because collective cock-ups were kept at a minimum through the years.

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