Sergio Marchionne, the man who saved Fiat from bankruptcy

After becoming the boss of the Fiat Group, the largest private company in Italy, in 2004, Sergio Marchionne usually wore a dark blue or black sweater. He wanted to show that he was different. At half Canadian, his footsteps as a leader of a company earned in Switzerland, with little patience for Italian sensibilities and rituals.

This sweater remained his hallmark, even when, after the merger between Fiat and Chrysler in 2009, he operated worldwide. "I do not have time to make a tie," he replied jokingly at the questions about his clothes. It was also a reference to the enormous zeal for the work that has always characterized him and that he also demanded from others. Legendary is his comment of his debut at Fiat, when he found that a whole row of people came in behind when the door of the company canteen opened: "How long have they been there in Waiting? "

Fiat deep in the red figures." We are losing two million euros a day, "he told reporters.Now, sixteen years later, the Fiat Chrysler Group has become ten The company has achieved a turnover of 111 billion euros in 2017 and a profit of 3.5 billion euros Fiat Chrysler has 237 000.

When Marchionne presented the quarterly figures in June of this year, he had put a tie for once.He was so happy to report that the Fiat Chrysler Group was no longer in debt.

This was the only one in the world. one of his last public appearances.At the end of June, he presented himself for a Intervention on his shoulders in a clinic in Zurich. Marchionne, a chain smoker, should be away for a few days. But after the operation, there were problems that worsened in the middle of last week. Wednesday morning, it became known that Marchionne died at the age of 66 years.

Marchionne is seen in Italy as the man who pushed the country towards the facts of globalization and modernization. He has shelved a whole series of layers of management within Fiat and is also engaged in a tough battle with the unions. In the end, the employees of the Fiat factories opted, contrary to their union's opinion, for Marchionne's vision – less good working conditions, a lot of automation, but no forced redundancies.

As the boss of what is now the world's seventh-largest automaker, Marchionne can write a number of big hits to his name. Under his leadership, a new version of the legendary Fiat 500, originally from 1957, was introduced in 2007. It was almost immediately a great success. Shareholders were very satisfied with the way he then realized the agricultural machine and excavation of the company (CNH Industrial, in 2011) and Ferrari independently (in 2015).

See also: Sixty years of Fiat 500: it still rolls like a rocket

Marchionne also quickly found that Fiat was too small to continue alone. In 2005, he reached an agreement with General Motors, in which he was particularly interested in Opel. This plan of cooperation failed, but Marchionne has recovered with two billion dollars. In 2009, there was a new chance, when Chrysler was on the brink of bankruptcy. In an admired affair, Marchionne managed to get Fiat to get 20 percent of Chrysler's shares in exchange for Fiat's technical knowledge.

Marchionne repeatedly emphasized his humble origins. His father was a rifleman, when Marchionne was fourteen, emigrating to Canada. In the carabinieri, I recognize "the same values ​​that are at the root of my own education: seriousness, honesty, sense of duty, discipline and service," he said last month when he delivered a Jeep, carabinieri in Rome.