In the crisis of the European automotive sector, if we want to play good and bad, it cannot be missing John Elkann. It just came out on the Financial Times a detailed article ona terrible year lived by the grandson of Gianni Agnelli: from personal events – the long dispute with her mother Margherita over her grandmother Marella’s inheritance – to open judicial issues – the accusation of tax fraud – and again, the 18% drop in the holding’s shares since the beginning of the year Exor, il GEDI Group for sale, offers to buy the Juventus, the Ferrari team which – despite the arrival of the champion Lewis Hamilton – hasn’t won a title since 2008.
Some considerations, in no particular order. While Italy’s most famous lawyer led the Fiat in the midst of the economic boom, Elkann found himself taking the helm of the empire in the storm. In 2004, we all remember the fateful question of Sergio Marchionne “on holiday from what?“, when the company was losing five million euros a day. What was once the most important industrial group in Italy finds itself, today, a diversified holding company with shareholdings that do not stand out for growth and productivity. Among all, Stellar
Now, it’s certainly not all the fault of Elkann. The automotive market has been in free fall for years. The EU’s highly ideological green policies have effectively dismantled, piece by piece, our production capacity. In pursuit of impossible targets – just think of the crazy stop on petrol cars in 2035, which was revoked only a few days ago until further notice – we have scrapped our factories, encouraging relocations and betting on a market, the electric one, which has turned out to be a deadly boomerang. For some in the EU the electric car it seems the only viable path to a zero-emission society, even at the cost of sacrificing entire industrial supply chains and not only that, our own safety. While the EU has demanded unsustainable industrial sustainability parameters for the automotive sector, China – which controls the global supply chain of lithium batteries and other components for electric vehicles – has flooded our market with its cars, which are also at very affordable prices thanks to the state aid that Beijing regularly pours into its companies.
The action of Elkann, in this chaos, she was not brilliant. Over the years, Stellar has in fact progressively decreased production in Italy, despite the company’s commitments to investments and employment in the country. It was all already foreseen, perhaps, from the day of the merger of FCA with the Peugeot group, which immediately presented an imbalance in the group in favor of the French side. Meanwhile, Stellantis acquired 20% of the Chinese automaker Leap motora further slap in the face of European production. Elkann – after having paid the ex-CEO a millionaire exit Carlos Tavares – went to Parliament, promising his will to keep Italy at the center of Stellantis’ strategy, without job cuts. Months have passed, and the future of Italian factories appears precarious to say the least. Of course, if we think of the over 220 billion in subsidies that the Italian state has invested in Fiat over thirty years, there is a bitter taste in the mouth and the budget can only be in the red.
Born in 1998, born under the sign of cancer. Venetian, currently in Rome. I follow foreign policy and parliamentary news. A tennis player in my spare time, I collect vinyl records and listen to them rigorously in front of a glass of red wine. Kierkegaard and Nozick two great masters.
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Ottavia Munari
