Sergio Marchionne: He was a metalworker, turnaround manager and multi-talented

Sergio Marchionne has left a lasting mark on Italy and Switzerland. (Andrew Gombert / EPA)

"I'm a metalworker, I make cars, tractors and trucks," Sergio Marchionne told Italian television. He probably did that, like so many things, with an eye blinking. First and foremost, Marchionne was an extraordinarily intelligent and effective manager of recovery situations for businesses. He was much more manager and investment banker than a "car guy" because he is at the forefront of many other auto companies and that's often a good thing . Marchionne was different, not only in his resume and leadership style, but also in his clothes. The dark sweater seemed indispensable to him. With the Fiat Italokanadier, the business world and Italy have lost one of the most successful and charismatic leaders of the last decades

Great energy from the early years

There was probably loved and hated from perspective and point of view. Without it, Fiat would probably no longer exist today, or at best, the company would still be a brand in a group like Volkswagen. At the same time, Marchionne did not mince words when it came to confronting the Italians objectively and soberly with bitter truths. In a Polish factory, one manufactures as much as in five Italians, the man with the always friendly face said one day. It was at the time when a 2 billion operating profit did not come from Italy. The activities of the Fiat Group in their home country have been a single deficit business for years, said Marchionne. That was in 2010, last year, the group earned at least a profit of 3.5 billion dollars.

Marchionne was born on June 17, 1952 in central Italy Chieti, a town in Abruzzo near the Adriatic coast. After his father's early retirement as an officer of the Carabineros, the family emigrated to Toronto, Canada, with 14-year-old Sergio. His heart beat two hearts, an Italian and a Canadian, which is why the media have always described him as Italocanadier. In the country with the maple leaf in Marchionne coat of arms spent the second part of his teenage years. From the beginning, the immigrant has become a multi-talented. According to Munzinger's biography, he graduated in 1978 with a BA in Philosophy from York University in Toronto and, in 1978, a BA in Economics from the University of Windsor, Ontario. In 1979, he completed a master's degree in business administration and in 1983 at the LLB legal examination of Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. In 1983 and 1985 he was finally certified as a chartered accountant and in 1987 as a lawyer.

He then acquired a good decade of professional experience in Canada. In 1983, Marchionne began as a tax expert at the Canadian branch of Deloitte Touche. Three years later, Toronto-based aluminum packaging manufacturer Lawson Mardon switched to another. He first worked there as a controller, starting in 1988 and then as head of business development and later as CFO. In 1994, the Swiss company Alusuisse-Lonza takes over the company, which allows Marchionne to go to Switzerland. At Alusuisse, he was responsible for the development of the company. As a result, double citizens have achieved an impressive rise in this country. In 1997, he was appointed General Manager of Alusuisse. He stood out when he was actually destined for Theodor Tschopp's successor, Dominique Damon. At that time, Alusuisse-Lonza had three divisions: aluminum, chemicals and packaging.

Very successful Swiss Years

Marchionne was considered intellectually brilliant, ambitious and direct. He embodied a mixture of Italian spontaneity and American determination, it was said. In 2000, Lonza was separated from Algroup, now renamed, and introduced independently on the stock market. The first CEO was Marchionne. It has pushed activity in the life sciences sector to a large margin at the expense of the traditional specialty chemicals sector.

When the SGS Inspectorate of Geneva 2001 sought to rejuvenate the board, Marchionne was elected to the board. The company was in transition and went through great turbulence. Immediately prior to the entry into office of the Lonza CEO, the unit shares were presented to SGS and they separated with Salina Amorini, the granddaughter of the company's founder. Capital and decision-making structures have been modernized. By February 2002, Marchionne significantly expanded his responsibilities at SGS and replaced Antony Czura as SGS's new Managing Director. Incidentally, he also joined Fiat in 2003, first as a member of the Board of Directors, to roll up his sleeves shortly thereafter as CEO. His predecessor as SGS boss had failed in his four-year term to fulfill the promise of growth made in 1998.

The new, with a powerful SGS boss was a guarantor of the skill and sound dynamics mentioned . He proved it in Lonza, where he resigned accordingly. Marchionne managed to clean SGS in no time. It has eradicated the operational and structural gaps. This again led to a profitability comparable to that of the two main competitors. There are few companies in Switzerland that would have survived such a loss in a relatively short time and with so many unpleasant noises, wrote the NZZ in 2004. During this time, Marchionne has consolidated its reputation for being the best. cold-blooded reversal artist. As such, it was also announced when he was appointed CEO of Fiat in 2004. The connection to the troubled car company was established by the Agnelli family. For years he has been a major shareholder of SGS with a 23% share in 2004.

Also in Switzerland, he received additional tasks with this track record. As Marchionne was from 2008 to 2010, among others, vice president of the big bank UBS. SGS has remained connected throughout its life. He has been president since 2006. Last Sunday, he was replaced by Peter Kalantzis, a former colleague of Marchionne. He had met him in 1994 at the age of 42 at Alusuisse-Lonza.

After his age in Switzerland, he took over in Turin not only the direction of the Fiat group, but also in personal union, the automobile division. Today, he is credited with saving the Italian brand. In 2009, he succeeded Fiat during the financial crisis in a daring move, the insolvent US Chrysler builder and later made the brand a source of revenue for the Fiat Group. Thanks to Chrysler in particular, he managed to keep the Fiat brand afloat. The supposedly extremely skilled negotiator, who always had a joke on the journalists' lips, completely overturned Fiat – often against the will of the unions. He has completed the typical compact cars of the Fiat brand with top-of-the-line models of the Maserati, Alfa Romeo and more recently Jeep brands and has not hesitated to denationalize Fiat so to speak, by moving the head office to Amsterdam and in London. The jewel of the Ferrari crown marketed Marchionne and immediately took over the presidency of the luxury brand after retiring Luca di Montezemola, one of Italy's most respected senior executives

Failed Collaborative Attempts

In recent years, the Fiat Group has been one of the major players in managing relations with another major competitor, to ensure by economies of scale the survival of the automaker on the long term. But he has only received cancellations from General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota and Ford. In its latest five-year plan, it has announced billions of investments in electric mobility and autonomous cars so as not to lose touch with the competition. However, Fiat has long missed this link, because in all the important issues of the future, the Italians compared to many competitors are clearly behind. The "black zero" was at the expense of current and future competitiveness.

At auto shows, press conferences and other public events, Marchionne always appeared clad in a dark sweater that became his trademark. Only in early June, he wore a tie. He had promised that in case Fiat-Chrysler is debt free. The feat was unfortunately his last big success, although the "metallurgist" despite his planned resignation for 2019 from the top of the group was not old iron. About a month after his birthday on July 25, Sergio Marchionne died in Zurich at the age of 66 due to unexpected complications after a shoulder operation. The classic and jazz lover leaves his partner Manuela and two children from his first marriage to a Canadian.

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